The Winds Of Time

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Camp’^

Rashtrapati Bhavan
New Delhi

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Call No.

THE WINDS OF TIME

£. Macnaghion

LADY GORDON

\Fronhspiece]

THE WINDS OF TIME

By lady GORDON

“ He has built his monument with the
winds of time at strife.”

A. E.

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. W.

First EUHtiem

^934

MILLIONS OF MILES AWAY
FROM THE KERRY
HE LOVED

CONTENTS

PART I

HLAP. PAGE

Foreword ....... xi

I Early Days 3

II Ireland in the ’Nineties — Marriage . 10

III London—Journalism — Society . . .16

IV Kerry — House and a Bog ... 26

V Making a Garden 34

VI Travels — Motor Tour in France — Sicily

— India — ^The Durbar — A Purdah Party
— “ Ranji ” 39

VII Kerry Society — ^The Skelligs . . .61

VIII Egypt — ^The Building of Ard-na-sidhe —

Some Kerry Fairies . . . *71

IX Politics — A Nationalist Meeting — The
Irish Club — Viceregal Lodge — ^Lloyd
George — ^The National Volunteers . 85

X The War— a Trip to France ... 97

PART II

XI Easter Week — ^My Garden— Visitors — ^A

School Treat . . . . *105

XII Mrs. Daly discourses — Puck Fair — ^Kerry

Weddings 122

XIII A Question of Butter — Conscription — ^The

Blockade of Kjllorglin— A Raid . 130

XIV Dublin — ^Its Intelligentsia— Looking for a

Flat . 138

vii

vm

UUiN ItiN iO

XV Battle, Murder and Sudden Death—

Christmas— A Story of the Black and
Tans

XVI The New Hygiene— Bridget Mary and

Mary Bridget— The Bleeding Statue of
Templemore

XVII Railways — Reprisals and Raids — The
Gentry and the Soul of Ireland — ^The
Truce

XVIII A Journey— Pouncs and Eggs — A Visitor —
Elections— The Civil War — ^More Raids

XIX Terrible Times

XX Another Journey and some Battles

XXI An Unwelcome Deliverance ,

XXII Collapse of the Civil War — Cooks and

THE Free State Army ....

XXIII De Valera— a World Tour— Ceylon —
Hong-Kong— Japan— Vancouver Island
—The Rockies — ^The C.P.R.

XXrV A Sad Farewell — ^Lismore — A Meet

XXV The Future- Patriotism— A Prayer

page

152

162

173

192

209

224

232

241

247

258

265

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING

PAGE

Lady Gordon .... Frontispiece

From a photograph by E, Macnagkton

Sir John Power, Bart., of Kilfane ... 6
Paved Garden at Ard-na-Sidhe , . . .112

Ard-na-Sidhe 258

h

FOREWORD

T O have any success with reminiscences in
these days one must have been on terms
of exceptional intimacy with Crowned Heads,
statesmen and diplomats, and have been proposed
to, or at least embraced, by most of the leading
celebrities of the day.

Now the only Royalty I have ever met was one
of our yovmger and more irresponsible Princes,
and his conversation was far from illuminating —
indeed, all I can remember of it was the adjective
“ bloody,” which he applied to every feature of
the foreign country in which we bodi happened
to find ourselves. My hand has never been sought
in marriage by an Empire Maker, nor have I ever
been made love to by an Ambassador ; while the
name of the only celebrity whose embraces I still
remember with confusion is one which I will
never divulge. It is true I have met several authors,
a certain number of politicians and even one or
two poets ; but, of the immortals, the only one
with whom I might have been able to claim ac-
quaintemce was Swinbmme, having been taken in
my youth, by a mutual fiiend, to his house at
Putney. Unfortunately, we never got beyond the
doorstep, where we were met by Mr. Watts Dunton,
who informed us with deep regret that the dis-
tinguished poet was not in a suitable condition to
receive a lady.

In the circumstances, whatever the eventual

foreword

fate of these memoirs may be, they are not likely
to bring me into the limelight or to increase my
financial stability. Nor are they written so much
with that intent, as to place on record, for anyone
likely to be interested, the existence of the class to
which I unhappily belong— a class now almost
extinct, and which, in a few more years, will have
passed completely out of memory— namely, the
Irish “landed gentry.”

Whether the world, or even Ireland, will be the
poorer or not for our disappearance is a question
which will have to be decided by our successors
—the Publicans and the Republicans who are
^ggnming OUT positions and our responsibilities. I
imagine their verdict will be that we were a half-
baked lot and not worth preserving : a point of
view with which I am inclined to agree, without
being at all impressed with the superiority of their
own qualifications.

At any rate, it can be said of us that we went
down with our backs to the wall, which, as a matter
of fact, had collapsed — ^as walls do in Ireland —
long before its owners ; holding on, in spite of
gunmen and incendiaries, to our dilapidated houses
and our wind-swept lands with a persistence which
we find it often ^fficult to explain.

Whether we cling to our country because we
love it, or because of a natural perversity which
makes us resent being turned out of it ; or whether
it is that we feel life anywhere else would be too
dull, the ftict remains that our flights from Ireland
during its numerous upheavals throughout the
ages have, as a rule, been of a temporary nature.
We have always come back.

The discriminating reader of these pages will,
I hope, not only discover why we have done so,
but find in them some of the elusive charm of a

FOREWORD

XUl

land the inhabitants of which are kept perpetually
on the move and are never allowed to suffer for
long from the blighting effects of established Law
and Order.

Edith Gordon.

Who art thou, starry ghost,

That lidest in the air
At head of all the host
And art so burning eyed
For all thy strengthlessness ?

World, I am no less

Than she whom thou hast awaited.

She who remade a Poland out of nothingness

And hath created

Ireland out of a breath of pride

In the reed bed of despair.

Herbert Trench.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I T is, I imagine, almost impossible to write a
book of reminiscences without, however un-
intentionally, offending somebody. If anybody,
on reading mine, should feel aggrieved, politically
or personally, I would ask him or her to pause for
a moment and reflect on all the things I might have
said — & heart-searching process which should have
the salutary effect of changing any temporary feeling
of annoyance into one of intense relief and pro-
found gratitude to the author for a restraint which
in one or two instances has not been achieved
without effort.

Some of the incidents described in this book have
already appeared in the Nation and Athenmm, The
Outlook, Country Life and The Ladies* Field, to the
Editors of which the customary acknowledgments
are made.

PART I

It is the race creates our soul
By touches many fingered.

It is our land that makes the song to sing
In beauty like the forest’s murmuring,

Herbert Trench

W.T.

B

CHAPTER I

EARLY DAYS

T he Irish are a kindly and amiable race with
an instinctive taste for bloodshed which
breaks out as a rule two or three times in the
course of every century.

In one of the intervals between two rebellions,
when the memory of the last had died down and
before the next had had time to develop, my father,
Richard Leeson, built himself a house in Kerry.
It was a wholly xmnecessary proceeding on his
part, for on coming into the Marshall estates, which
he inherited from his maternal uncle, he found
himself already in possession of three ruined castles
and four derelict houses, the resiilt of seven gener-
ations of architectural eflfort on the part of his
ancestors which should have acted as a warning,
and any of which he might have restored with
more success than attended the building of Gallina-
fercy, a house without a redeeming feature. It
has not even a view, although within a stone’s
throw of all the magnificent scenery of Dingle Bay,
at the head of which it is situated. In his defence
it must, however, be admitted that he lived in an
age without taste and in a country devoid of
traditional domestic architecture ; while it is at
any rate to his credit that he did not perpetrate
another of the numerous pretentious sham castles
which sprang up like mushrooms all over the South
of Ireland in the earUer part of the nineteenth

^ THE WINDS OF TIME

century Eud. which were the bels-ted outcome of
the “ Gothic revival ” which Horace Walpole did
so much to popularize in England.

A lovely old ruin with great possibilities which
he seems to have ignored was Killaha Castle,
near Killamey, the ancient stronghold of the
O’Donoghue of the Glen, which came into the
family by marriage with a daughter of the clan.
The Marshalls, who were descended from a Crom-
wellian officer who came over with Sir Charles
Wilmot’s expedition to Ireland in 1602, seem to
have picked up local heiresses with great facility
and, with the Markhams, who were also Crom-
wellians and with whom they intermarried, appear
to have acquired, after the fashion of the English
of the day, a good deal of land in Kerry to which
they possibly had no very valid claim. As a class
they are held in abhorrence by Mr. de Valera,
whose anxiety to dispossess their descendants is
only equalled by the ruthless determination of
Providence to exterminate them ; most Protesteint
families in Kerry to-day being on the verge of
extinction.

I was too young when he died to remember my
father, who was in no way a typical Irish landlord,
since he neither hunted nor fished nor shot. He
was the second of the seven sons of Robert Leeson
and great-grandson of the ist Earl of Milltown who
built Russborough in County Wicklow, one of the
most perfect Georgian houses in Ireland, decorated
by Italian workmen, and with ceilings painted by
Angelica Kauffmann, which passed out of the
Leeson family on the death, in 1891, of the last
Earl — popularly known as “Blastus, the ICing’s
Chamberlain,” the nickname bestowed on Him
in Dublin, where he was ffimous for the bad lan-
guage he used, and where he held an appointment

THE POWERS

5

as Lord Chamberlain to the Viceroy (Blastus, I
may mention for the benefit of those whose Biblical
knowledge is not what it might be, being an official
who held a similar position at the Court of King
Herod).

The title, which had been in abeyance for some
years, devolved in 1930 on my brother, Markham
Leeson-Marshall, who has so far made no effort
to establish his claim, being of the opinion that a
peerage without an heir or the wherewithal to live
up to it would be more of a liability than an asset.

My father, who was originally in the Army,
retired when he married. My mother was the
eldest daughter of the Venerable Ambrose Power,
Archdeacon of Lismore and grand-daughter of Sir
John Power, of Kilfane, who founded the Kilkenny
Hunt in 1 797 and of whom it used to be said that
“ not to know Sir John Power was not to know
Ireland.”

The elder of the two sons of John Power of
Tiillamaine Castle in Co. Tipperary, who was
A.D.C. to Lord Clive in India, my great-grand-
father, who was made a baronet in 1836, was not
only a great sportsman and a wonderful host, but,
what is more unusual in hunting circles, a well-
read and highly cultivated man ; while his brother
Richard, who had a house in Dublin but who spent
a great deal of his time at Kilfane, was a marvellous
amateur actor who, after taking a leading part in
innumerable theatrical performances at Kilfane
and elsewhere, eventually founded the Private
Theatre of Edlkenny, which from 1802 to 1819
brought not only considerable fame to the per-
formers but fortune to the charitable institutions
of the town, to which the proceeds were devoted.

The popularity of Richard Power, who died of
consumption in 1824, is eloquently expressed in

6 THE WINDS OF TIME

the Introduction to the Book of the Kilkenny
Theatre, where, in the florid language of the day,
he is described as possessing “ the accomplishments
of a mind embellished by the cultivation of the
fine arts directed by a correct taste and imparting
to his conversation that grace without effort and
interest without display for which he was dis-
tinguished.”

“ His principles [we read] were pure, his sense of honour
high, his affections generous and kind ... he was a fond
relation : in his closer intimacies the steadiest and most
devoted friend, in his general intercourse frank, cordial and
conciliatory. It was truly said of him that he never made
an enemy or lost a friend and in a country distracted by
dvil war and religious discord a man could not be found
of any sect or party who felt unkindly towards him.”

In spite of Sir John having left six sons and
several grandsons the Power baronetcy appears at
the moment to be without an established heir, while
Kilfane, once the centre of gaiety and unbounded
hospitality, is now the home of a solitary spinster
who admits, not without protest, an occasional
visitor from the outer world.

My mother was considered extremely beautiful,
but I never knew anybody who got less value for
her beauty. I doubt if she was even aware of it.
It certainly did not interest her. As a matter of
fact, I do not think she was interested in anything,
with the possible exception of the next world, and
even on that her views were distinctly vague. She
inherited none of the Power characteristics or
accomplishments. Unlike her father the Arch-
deacon, who, in spite of having only one arm, was
a hard rider to hounds, she was never on a horse
in her life and possessed none of the genial accessi-
bility which endeared him so much to the in-
habitants of Lismore that, when he died and it

SIR JOHN POWER, Bart.

OF KILFANE

[ 6 ]

PURITANICAL EVANGELICISM 7

was proposed to erect a memorial to him in the
Cathedral, the Roman Catholics of the town
begged for one to which they could all subscribe,
a fountain somewhat in the lamentable style of
the Albert Memorial being ultimately erected. I
have been told of my grandfather that he never
drove past a dance on Sundays at the cross-roads
without alighting from his" gig and taking a turn
with one of the country girls. My mother not
only never danced but thought it and such
pastimes as acting and card-playing sinful.

In the ’sixties and ’seventies of the nineteenth
century life must have been inexpressibly dreary
for a young couple with no country pursuits, few
neighbours and their nearest town, Tralee, thirteen
miles away over a desolate moimtain road. Except
for a year in Italy I don’t think they ever left
home, and apart from an occasional visit from my
uncles and aunts they do not appear to have seen
anybody from the outer world. Their nearest
neighbours. Sir John and Lady Godfrey, were,
like themselves, a young couple with a growing
family, but though, as children, we were all in-
separable and eventually married each other to a
somewhat confusing extent, neither my mother nor
Lady Godfrey ever became sufficiently familiar to
call each other by their Christian names..

In the remoteness in which they dwelt religion
seems to have been their chief support, the puri-
tanical Evangelicism which was then rampant in
Ireland, and which expressed itself in devastating
tracts and Sankey and Moody hymns, providing
them with moral and religious comfort ; while,
judging from the irmumerable volumes they left
behind them, they must have devoured sermons
with the same avidity with which the present
generation devours detective fiction. Brought up

8 THE WINDS OF TIME

on the Hell and Everlasting Punishment theory,
from the time I could speak I never went to bed
without repeating

“ I lay my body down to sleep,

I give my soul to God to keep ;

If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take ; ”

while in my dreams I could smell the sulphur and
brimstone, which, I was led to suppose, would
otherwise await me in the — somewhat unlikely —
event of my premature decease.

My parents do not appear to have been especially
interested in their children. My brother and
eldest sister Mary ran more or less wild in the
former’s holidays. They were many years older
than me and the subject of extreme envy on my
part. My next sister, Grace, was delicate and,
though I was extremely robust, whenever she got
ill I was subjected to the treatment prescribed for
her. On one occasion, when she had earache, my
ears were stuffed with cotton-wool and I was only
allowed out with a red-flannel bandage tied round
my head. She was thin and pale and I was fat
and pink, but when she was ordered cod-liver oil
I was made to share the dose ; and when my father
died and we were leaving home for good, the
carriage being at the door to take us to the train,
a half-finished bottle of this loathsome liquid being
discovered in the nursery cupboard, it was poured
down my throat in order that it should not be
“ wasted.” I can remember to this day the taste
of it and the extreme satisfaction it gave me when
I was subsequently sick all over the carriage and
everybody in it.

For several years after my father’s death we
lived abroad, in France, Brussels and Germany,
undergoing the painful but inevitable process of

SCHOOLDAYS

9

education. I loathed my schooldays and can
never look at a schoolgirl to this day without a
feeling of repulsion. Life in Germany was made
even more unpleasant than it need have been,
owing to my being made to play the piano, an
instrument I have always detested and for which
I had no talent and so httle ear for music that it
is with the greatest difficulty I can recognize the
most hackneyed tunes. Yet because it was then
considered a necessary item in every girl’s education
I was made to practise for five and six hours every
day, with the sole result that on my eighteenth
birthday I closed the piano with a bang for ever.

During our absence abroad Ireland went through,
in the ’eighties, another of her periodic upheavals
in the cause of “ freedom,” which had for its
immediate object the non-payment of rent and
the extermination of landlordism. The “ Plan
of Campaign ” was carried out with exceptional
virulence in Kerry, where “ moonlighting ” and
“ boycotting ” made life impossible for anybody
who defied the decrees of the Land League. In
justification of the brutal murders and outrages
committed it must be admitted that they were
often the result of callous evictions and that eventu-
ally they wrested from England a much-needed
reform in the Land Laws and led to the series of
Acts, from Lord Ashbourne’s to that of George
Wyndham, by which the people of Ireland were
to become owners of the soil for which they had
fought so often and so desperately.

CHAPTER II

IRELAND IN THE ’NINETIES — ^MARRIAGE

T he Ireland I returned to had settled do^^
once more. A few people in the ’nineties
still had “police protection.” The Morrogh
Bernards with whom I stayed near Killarney had
four enormous members of the R.I.C. (Royal Irish
Constabulary) Hving on the premises, two of whom
invariably accompanied us on bicycles whenever
we went out, a proceeding which thrilled me to
the marrow and which made us a subject of intense
interest to the American tourists we met on the
road. But this was an exceptional instance, due
to nervousness on the part of Mr. Bernard, who
had taken seriously a threatening letter from a
disgruntled tenant.

Everywhere in the South rents were being paid
and landowners were flocking back in approved
fashion to thdr homes. Mr. Parnell had emerged
triumphantly out of the Pigott conspiracy. Under
the Ashbourne Act land purchase was progressing
satisfactorily and even The Times was admitting
that prospects in Ireland were cheerful. Once
more it looked as if the age-long quarrel with
England had come to an end ; and if the settle-
ment of the land question had meant the settlement
of Ireland, undoubtedly the peace we were then
enjoying would have been more lasting than it
eventually proved. Unfortimately, however, the
Irish question goes somewhat deeper and has for

lO

DROMANA

II

its underlying motive nothing less than complete
separation from England — a fact not even dimly
apprehended by our legislators at that time, and
the full significance of which is only being grasped
to-day.

Politics, however, were the last thing to occupy
my mind just then. As a matter of fact, I don’t
suppose I had a mind — the young very seldom had
in those days.

My old home was shut up. My brother, who
had had a hectic time with the Land League, was
living in London. He had been called to the Bar
and had married Mabel Godfrey, who died a
couple of years later when their little girl May was
only a few months old. My mother, who had
always disliked Kerry, was living with my sisters
in England, but to me at that time, and, indeed,
to the present day, Ireland was the only coimtry
in the world, and for the next few years I spent
most of my time there, paying visits, dancing, flirting
and generally enjoying life.

For a young woman of those days I was extremely
emancipated and went about a lot by myself —
an unheard-of thing at that time in England, when
girls were not supposed to cross the street by them-
selves or to pay a country-house visit without their
parents. But I think people were more sensible
in Ireland. Anyway, as my mother, being more
or less of an invalid, never went anywhere, I had
no one to go about with and travelled round Ireland
from one house to another in the most independent
fashion. My happiest memories are of Dromana,
the beautiful home of my Uncle Henry and Aunt
Mary Villiers Stuart, who had an enormous family,
the youngest members of which were kept strictly
in the backgroimd. My uncle, who was an auto-
cratic and strangely remote creature, did not

j2 THE WINDS OF TIME

apparently even know them by sight, as it is related
of him that he once met them on the road and,
being struck by their beauty, asked the nurse
whose children they were, being greatly astonished
on hearing they were his own. My aunt was a
woman of exceptional charm and was adored by
everybody. She was a perfect wife, a delightful
mother and a popular hostess. Nothing ever
upset her equanimity, not even being expected by
my uncle to start at twenty-four hours’ notice for
the uttermost ends of the earth, in a day when
travelling required distinctly more preparation
than at present.

Romantically situated on a rock overhanging
the Blackwater, Dromana was originally a Desmond
Castle, the birthplace, and home in her youth,
of the famous Countess of that name, of whom it
is related that, at the age of no, accompanied by
her comparatively youthful daughter of ninety,
she crossed from Youghal to Bristol, driving from
there to London in a donkey-cart to petition
Queen Elizabeth on the subject of her jointure,
confiscated when her husband had been attainted.
Although the family records are silent on the sub-
ject, one cannot help hoping that her enterprise
was rewarded in other ways than in the bestowing
on her, by the Queen, of a cast-off garment, the
“ slobbered forefront ” of which deeply offended
the old Countess, who eventually lived to the age
of a hundred-and-forty and is said to have died
from a fall from one of the cherry-trees which Sir
Walter Raleigh had planted in Munster.

With five hundred years of family history lived
within its walls, and a more than ordinary share
of ghosts, a touch of the gruesome was added to
Dromana by a room full of mummies in glass
cases, which my uncle had brought back with him

THE GRAND PEOPLE

C(

5 >

13

from Egypt and which his family always regarded
with superstitious horror — ^and to which people
were inclined to attribute his own tragic end by
drowning, the result of a fall as he was landing
from his yacht on a dark night, just imder the house.

His eldest son, Harry, died not long afterwards,
at the age of forty, and though the mummies have
long been relegated to a Dublin museum their
curse still seems to hang over Dromana, on which
Fortune smiles unwillingly to-day.

Another stately pile overhanging the Blackwater,
where I put in much time in my youth, was Lismore
Castle, where another of my uncles, who was agent
to the Duke of Devonshire, lived for some years.
The Duke himself never came to Ireland after the
murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, and the
agency, which was one of the most-sought-after in
Ireland, included the marvellous fishing and shoot-
ing of what was in those days a vast estate. After
the death of the old Duke, his successor (better
known as Lord Hartington) used to come over
every year with his celebrated Duchess. They
lived in great state, entertaining royalty and their
cotmtry neighbours with the same indiscriminate
magnificence.

“ Ah, them were the grand people,” as an old
retainer not long ago regretfiilly remarked, refer-
ring to the days “ when Dukes were Dukes and
Duchesses no throuble to anybody, betting and
racing all day and gambling all night with the
gold piled up on the table beside them.”

A few miles farther up the river was Glencaim
Abbey, now, alas, like so many Irish country
houses, a Cistercian nunnery, but then the home
of another uncle and aunt, the Willie Powers,
with whom I used to stay and from where I was
married in 1897 to Home Gordon, the only son

THE WINDS OF TIME

of Sir Seton Gordon of Erabo, a Scottish baronet
whose ancestors had, however, forsaken Scotland
many years before and made their home in
Brighton. Home’s father and mother had separ-
ated when he was four years old and he had been
brought up by his grandmother, Ellen Lady
Gordon, who had also separated from her husband
after two years of matrimony. In the circum-
stances it was perhaps inevitable that Home and
I should eventually follow the family tradition, but
at the moment nothing was farther from our
thoughts. The fact that we had nothing whatever
but prospects to marry on in no way depressed
us. Home had no profession and no conspicuous
talents beyond a certain facility with his pen. He
was, however, firmly convinced of his destiny as
a writer of epoch-making novels. For a brief —
very brief— period I shared this optimistic delusion ;
but when, after some months of strenuous effort
in the literary and journalistic world, he had only
succeeded in obtaining the editorship of the Banjo
World at three guineas a month, my confidence
began to wane and I suggested his turning his
attention to the City, where he eventually obtained
a small secretaryship which annoyed his grand-
mother so much that she all but cut him out of
her will (which was the chief asset in his prospects).
Having described him as “ a horrid little City
clerk,” she accused him of dragging into the dust
the illtistrious House of Gordon, no member of
which had ever degraded himself by earning his
living. Except for this one Victorian prejudice
on the subject of what constituted a “ gentleman,”
she was a really vety up-to-date old lady, who
lived to the age of ninety but not long enough to
see the complete collapse of the traditions in which
she had been brought up. I often wonder what

MARRIAGE

15

she would have thought of our modem shopkeeping
aristocracy and of the commercial travellers of
illustrious lineage who call upon us to-day with
samples of vacuum-cleaners and sparking-plugs.

In due course she resigned herself to the social
degradation involved by having a grandson in the
City, and Home and I were married and eventually
set up in London on an extremely problematical
;^500 a year, the best part of which went on a
flat in Artillery Mansions.

CHAPTER III

LONDON— JOURNALISM — ^SOCIETY

I FOUND life in London at first very disappoint-
ing. We knew nobody and, being very hard
up, went nowhere. The winter of 1897 was one
of more or less continuous yellow fog which de-
pressed and suffocated me. I loathed Artillery
Mansions and the neighbourhood of Victoria Street
during the two years I inhabited that colourless
region. At the end of that time we moved to
Ovington Square, where we had discovered a small
house at a remarkably low rent. It looked out on
trees and there was room to turn round in it. My
spirits rose and I began to write.

When I look aroimd to-day at the desperate
effort of so many of the rising generation to force
an entry into the fields of literature and journalism,
I marvel at the ease with which I embarked on a
career which, if not distinguished, was at any rate
fairly lucrative, and which for some years kept me
not only in pin money but interested and occupied.

^ Like everything else in life chance was respon-
sible for this turn in the tide of my affairs. I
had written a letter to the Outlook, a sixpenny
papCT of some repute, describing our adventures
during a journey in Italy. To my surprise, the
editor, Mr. Percy Hurd, not only printed it, but,
on sending me a cheque for it, wrote me a personal
letter asking if I would like to contribute a weekly
article dealing with social subjects likely to be of

EARLY JOURNALISTIC WORK 1 7

interest to women, for which he would be prepared
to pay me 25L per column. I was totally without
experience and had never even attended a school
of journalism, considered so necessary to-day, but
of course I accepted the offer with enthusiasm and
remained for some years on the staflf— until, in
fact, I had come to the end of all the topics and
all the ideas of which my exhausted brain was
capable. In the meantime the Ladies’ Field had
written to ask me to contribute a somewhat similar
series of weekly articles for them, for which I
received three guineas a week. One day Lady
Colin Campbell, who was then editing the paper,
sent for me to the office. I went in fear and
trembling, thinking I was in for trouble of some
kind, instead of which she made various flattering
remarks about my writing and said that Mr.
Edward Hudson, one of the proprietors of the
paper, had asked her to arrange for me to meet
him there. I was thrilled at making the acquaint-
ance of Lady Colin, who was still very beautiful
and attractive although crippled with rheumatism
and her hands completely deformed. Mr. Hudson,
who came in later, was also extraordinarily kind
about my articles and asked us to stay the following
week-end at Lindisfame, his lovely castle on Holy
Island in Northumberland, which had just been
restored by Mr. Lutyens (now Sir Edwin), who
was one of the party and who kept us all amused
from morning till night.

Mr. Hudson was a most hospitable host not
only at Lindisfame, but in his equally delightful
house in Qjieen Anne’s Gate, where we frequently
dined and where we met several stars of the
literary and journalistic firmament, including Sir
George Riddell (now Lord Riddell), who later
insisted on my collaborating with him on a novel

1 8 THE wnros of time

which he wanted to write. That it was not a
success when completed was no_ doubt largely
due to my failure to give expression to ideas or
impart life to characters I was not in sympathy
with. Only too conscious of its shortcomings, we
never had the nerve to offer it to a publisher,
but buried it as a serial in one of the provincial
papers which Sir George owned and in which my
weekly articles were being reprinted at the time.

Although the collaboration did not prove a
success, I got a great deal of entertainment out of
the effort. Sir George Riddell being the most
amnsirig and wittiest of companions. His attitude
to life was one of amused cynicism ; he had no
illusions and took nothing seriously. When I
attacked the News of the World, which he owns and
which I considered, and always shall consider, one
of the most deplorable influences in journalism,
unmoved by my vehemence he would draw a vivid
picture of the drab existence of the British working
man, living and toiling in colourless hardship,
sitting down on Sunday morning with his pipe
and his paper to the one thrill of his life : the
pleasant exhilaration derived from sensational ac-
counts of immorality in the upper classes and of
crime in his own. It was impossible to argue or
to disagree with Sir George — one could only laugh.

Most of my writing appeared under a pseudonym,
but in 1908 I published imder my own name a
collection of essays, which was received with
astonishment by certain of my friends and ac-
quaintances. “How clever of you to be able to
wnte ! ” they exclaimed, in terms of surprise
mingled with awe. In vain I protested I wasn’t at
all profound. They persisted in regarding me as
Kjmething abnormal and wanted to know all
about my symptoms. “ It must be so lovely,”

LITERARY WOMEN 1 9

they said, “ to feel the thoughts rushing out of
you.”

As I was anxious to retain their admiration,
which was as welcome as it was imusual, I took
care not to disillusion them by telling them that,
far from being spontaneous, my writing was a
matter of intense and depressing effort. Instead,
I endeavoured to look as inspired as possible, while
remaining more or less inarticulate. By this atti-
tude (which I copied from the few distinguished
authoresses I had met) I enhanced my reputation
for “ cleverness ” and incidentally increased the
sale of my book. For, of course, the less you utter
in public, the more curious people will be to find
out what you say in print. To this fact, even
more than to the paucity of their ideas, must the
silence of all great writers be attributed. Certainly
no authoress who has gone into a fifth edition ever
thinks of sparkling in society. She knows that
all she need do is to look mysterious. The more
successful she is in this respect, the more “ interest-
ing ” she will be considered ; that is to say, outside
literary circles. The latter she naturally avoids.
No literary woman ever wants to meet another
of her own profession. They know too much
about each other. This fact, however, is studiously
ignored by their friends, whose chief object in life
seems to be to bring all the “ clever ” people they
know together. “ You must meet Mrs. B.,” they
say, “ you both write, so you are sure to get on.”
You begin to expostulate, but it is not the slightest
use, for the next moment you find yourself intro-
duced to Mrs. B., who, on being told of your
literary proclivities, glares at you and says “ Oh ! ”
in surprised tones. It is obvious that she has never
heard of you, and the probability is that you have
also never heard of her. However, you sit down

20 THE WINDS OF TIME

side by side and wonder why on earth you should
be supposed to get on together. It is true you
both write, but far from that misfortune being the
means of attracting you to each other, the only
effect it has is of making you mutually suspicious.
The fact of neither having read the other compli-
cates the situation, so, after a few tentative remarks
in which each tries to find out the other’s " line,”
you fall back upon your respective publishers as
a topic of discussion.

It is at this point that you really begin to get
interested in each other. For, if there is one thing
that every woman who writes wants to find out,
it is — ^how much every other woman who writes
makes by her pen. In the circumstances it is
almost needless to remark that neither thinks of
speaking the truth ; for her publishers’ terms is the
one subject on which the imagination of the author-
ess may be trusted to display itself. If she would
weave half as much romance into her books as she
weaves into the question of the royalties she receives
or the editions she goes into, she might become
reaUy rich. As it is, after a few efforts, in which
each tries to find out how much the other makes
and neither succeeds in obtaining the slightest
clue, the conversation flags, and you finally take
leave of each other, wondering more than ever
why your hostess should have been so anxious to
bring you together.

In addition to being a director of Newnes’ Mr.
Hudson was the chief proprietor of Counivy Lije^
in which he took a keen personal interest. I often
went with him in his car on expeditions to look
at houses and gardens, reproductions of which
wore to appear in that delightful weekly. On one
occanon he took me to lunch at Gravetye with
Mr. William Robinson and I think it was the result

MANURE OR LOVE

21

of this visit, and of another to Miss Jekyll’s at
Munstead, which first fired me with the desire to
be a gardener.

Mr. Robinson, who comes from the North of
Ireland, is paralysed and was wheeled about in
a Bath-chair. I was so afraid he might expect
some intelligent remarks from me as we went
round the place that I opened conversation by
announcing I knew nothing whatever about garden-
ing, to which he replied mournfully, “ Nobody
does.” Later, when I stopped, transfeed by a
gigantic dahlia, and asked him how he managed
to get it to grow to such a size, he told me an
amusing story of an affected lady he once met, in
whose garden everything grew abnormally large.
When he asked her how she managed it, she replied
with a simper, “ Love— just love,’ whereupon her
old Scotch gardener, who was accompanying
them, remarked testily, “ Nonsense, ma’am, you
know it’s manure.”

If I owe whatever gardening knowledge I possess
to-day to Mr. Hudson, my mental development —
such as it is — ^was entirely due to Dr. Emil Reich.
A Hungarian by birth, a Doctor of Law and Pro-
fessor of History, who had spent most of his life
m France, he was lecturing, when I came across
him, at the Imperial Institute on Greek art. His
English was as perfect as his French and he had
the most beautiful voice and delivery. Without
notes of any kind he could pour forth for hours
on almost any subject imder the sim, carrying his
audience away on a flood of oratory hitherto
unknown in the lecture rooms of the London Uni-
versity. Later he became a fashionable craze,
with Qaridge’s the scene of a series of lectures on
“ Plato and Platonism,” to which society women,
always in search of a new sensation, flocked for a

22 THE WINDS OF TIME

time. The craze, however, did not last long —
London crazes seldom do. Some prophet from
die East, with a new philosophy or a new religion,
took his place. Platonism, which I think most
of the audience fondly imagined had something
to do with love, was out of date, anyway. The
Hindu with the unpronounceable name looked
so romantic— his “ message ” was so “ intriguing.”
As the Queen’s Hall began to fill, Claridge’s began
to empty. Emil Reich was already a sick man.
His books, like his lectures, no longer met with
the success they deserved. He became embittered,
and slashed with his pen and his tongue against
the excessive Imperialism to which he attributed
the intellectual barrenness of English men and
women. On every possible occasion he thundered
forth on the coming war with Germany, even going
so far as giving 1912 as the date when it would
start, which was only two years out. He foretold
that it would be a long and a desperate struggle,
that England would emerge from it victorious for
a time,, but that later she would collapse ; that
one by one she would lose her colonies and eventu-
ally degenerate into a second-rate island kingdom.

Nobody listened.

Nothing, as a matter of fact, was further from
people’s minds in the early days of the new century
than war. Everything seemed eternally stable
and permanent, society rotating round its amuse-
ments, which seemed as fixed as the rotation of the
planets round the sun. London was gay in the
ponderous Victorian way which still lingered on
during the first few years of King Edward’s reign.
Our finances had improved. The Bmjo World had
been succeeded by journalism of a more universal
and more lucrative nature. The City had pro-
vided a couple of directorships. We had got to

“ UP’iLL WORK ”

23

know a number of people and were asked to colossal
lunches and gargantuan dinners of nine or ten
courses. I often foimd myself wondering on what
principle the guests had been invited to meet each
other, as one seldom sat next anyone of particular
iaterest. One night, at a party of thirty-six, I
discovered that the name of everyone at the table
began with a G or an H. We were being worked
off alphabetically !

On another occasion I said to the daughter of
the house, who was rather a friend of mine, that
I could not understand why her mother, who was
a notorious “ climber,” bothered to ask people
like us who did not entertain and did not possess
menservants. “ She thinks you will have them
some day,” she replied, “ she is entertaining you
for the future.”

There was one house in Belgrave Square to
which we were often invited, where the host let
himself go on occasions regardless of his painfully
acquired letter “ h.” One night, having asked
me the name of one of his own guests, and replying,

when I told him, that she was “ d d ugly,” he

leant back in his chair and said with a sigh,
“ Society is up’ill work, my dear, up’ill work.”

Personally I derived a good deal of amusement
from these entertainments. I have always liked
good food and good wine and thoroughly appre-
ciated the hospitality of the rich, who in those
days vied with each other in sumptuous enter-
taining : but the life of a parasite was not one I
could continue to lead indefinitely. It was empty
and aimless. I was restless, and none of the
“ causes ” or movements in which other women
seemed to find a certain feverish distraction afforded
me any abiding satisfaction. Woman Suffrage
and Christian Science both left me cold. I never

THE WINDS OF TIME

24

wanted anything so obvious as a vote and my
faith was never of the kind that could remove
moimtains or cure measles. Theosophy held me
for a brief while— until I was invited to meet the
new Messiah discovered in India by Mrs. Besant
and introduced to London by Lady Emily Lutyens.
He was a beautiful Hindu boy about twelve years
old. He wore an Eton collar and was being taken,
I discovered, to Olympia by the Lutyens boys to
learn roller-skating, which seemed to me a strangely
inappropriate anti-climax to the innumerable and
varied incarnations through which he had been
traced in the course of the ages.

Fading out of theosophical circles, I drifted on
and off committees and in and out of various futile
attempts at social reform. Mr. Brisco, Lucy
Lady Egmont’s second husband, whose whole life
was devoted to good works, persuaded me at
dinner one night to adopt a Church Army family.
It was a disastrous experience in which the
“ Army ” and I were equally imposed upon, and
which put me off all such experiments for ever.
As a matter of fact, I am afraid I was not bom
with the necessary enthusiasm for reforming people.
I cannot even make up my mind whether amateur
social reform is much use ; sometimes I am in-
clined to think it might possibly be better to leave
t h i n gs alone, since much of what is called “ re-
form ” only appears to aggravate the misery it is
intended to relieve. As things are, it seems to me
that unless you can pull a weed up by its roots it
is hardly worth while attacking it at all. To snip
its head off is merely to encourage and promote
the growth which you are foolishly endeavouring
to check. And nearly all the social reformers I
knew at that time did nothing but snip.

Disappointed and disillusioned, I had got to

“ BESS ” STOKES 25

the stage which sooner or later we all reach, when
one pauses to take stock of oneself and to ask wildly
of Heaven what one is to do with one’s life, I felt
I must get away from everybody and everything
if I were not to become like the lady in the Divorce
Court who, on being reprimanded by the judge
for the frequency with which she committed
adultery, flippantly remarked : “ Well, what else
can you do between tea and dinner ? ”

Fortunately for my morals, before I was driven
to such desperate extremes a way out of my diffi-
culties presented itself. I came in for a small sum
of money with which I acqmred a tiny property
in Kerry, which had at one time belonged to an
ancestor. Judge Day, who had given it as a wedding
present to his niece, “ Bess ” Stokes, whose ghost
was still to be seen — an old lady in grey — standing
at the gate near the ruined cottage she had built
and in which she was said to have “ taken the
floor ” herself at a party she had given to celebrate
her hundredth birthday.

And I started building, being the ninth member
of my demented family to do so in Kerry,

CHAPTER IV

KERRY— A HOUSE AND A BOG

T he site I chose for my house was perfect. On
a height above Garagh Lake, it was sur-
rounded by mountains varying in colour from
deepest purple to distant misty blue. Tall fir-trees
led down to the water’s edge, where a little bay of
my own was formed by a long and narrow wooded
island of strange, mysterious charm, where herons
nested and bred. Behind the house, the twin peaks
of Carrantuohill, the highest moimtain in Ireland,
rose above the vast gorse and heather-clad bog,
and away to the right the sea ghnted faintly at the
foot of die Sheve Mish range.

To convey any impression of the wild romantic
beauty of the landscape in words is as impossible
as to portray it on canvas. No picture I have seen
has ever done it justice and, personally, I am
utterly incapable of describing it on paper. For
one thing, it was always changing. Seen in the
mist of an autumn morning, with lake and moun-
tains merged in the pearly haze, it was like a scene
in Fairyland. Later, when the mist had rolled
away, the mountains would slowly take on shape
and colour as the clouds flung shadows in the
hollows of their sloping heights, while the Lake,
reflecting the biiiHant blue of the sky, lay smiling
at their feet. A wind would suddenly get up — “ a
fairy blast” as it is called in Kerry-^and the
Lake, breaking into white-crested waves, would

KERRY

27

dance madly up and down, while the mountains
frowned threateningly against the darkening sky.
Later — all still again, the purple stems of the fir-
trees reflecting the light of the setting sun, the
opalescent water breaking gently against the rocks
at the end of the island, where I used to sit trans-
fixed until the moon rose and the final change to
the silver radiance of the night drove me indoors.
In rain and wind it was another different world,
which changed, however, quite as often as on days
of golden glamour, the Lake glooming in a thoiosand
shades of grey and lead, the mountains withdraw-
ing behind impenetrable mist or glowering, black
and forbidding, behind the storm-clouds ^ving
furiously up from the Atlantic.

Only once have I seen the fury of a Kerry gale
surpassed, and that was by a Mediterranean one
in North Africa, which appeared to hurl the ships
in the harbour into the air, and which actually
blew the glass out of our bedroom windows, an
experience which impressed itself chiefly on my
mind by the fact of our being charged for the
damage in our bill by a rapacious hotelkeeper, who,
I need hardly say, was French !

Terrifying as a Kerry gale can be, I never found
it melancholy or half so depressing as a wet day
in London. For there is an elemental grandeur
about an Atiantic storm, not only music in the
sound of wind and rain and running water, but
something more : an inherent sense of fitness, as if
to be tossed by the wind and drenched by the rain
were necessary to bring the soul within reach of the
stars — a sense of healthfulness to mind and body
which the inhabitants of Kerry feel, which makes
them suspicious of drought and a prolonged course
of sunshine. The winter I started my building
was a phenomenal one. For months hardly a drop

THE WINDS OF TIME

28

of rain had fallen, the temperature being almost as
high as that in an average summer. An unusual
number of people had died. Commenting on it to
one of the men engaged in clearing the ground for
the foundations, “ Faith,” he replied, “ thereVe
been a fright of deaths of late, it could be that the
weather came too fine.”

To build a house at any time is for a woman
more or less of an vmdertaking, and building, like
fighting a battle miles from your base, adds con-
siderably to the difficulties of the situation. My
house, for reasons of economy and because I was
in too great a hurry for bricks and mortar, was made
of wood, which was to come over from England in
sections duly numbered and labelled. Unfor-
tunately, it suffered at the first start off from the
disadvantage of having got lost in the post on its
way over. Three workmen and a small boy, also
imported from England, sat patiently on the site
for a week, cheered by the spasmodic arrival of
occasional consignments of doors and window-
frames. In due course, however, the framework
turned up, and having seen operations commence
I returned to London, with implicit confidence in
human nature in general and the building trade
in particular. No sooner was I established in
London, however, than my presence in Ireland
seemed imperative, and whenever I was in Ireland
I was invariably required in London. No matter
how often I crossed the Channel I never seemed to
be in the right place. However quickly I came, I
was invariably just too late to effect some vital
alteration which would have enhanced the beauty
of the structure and materially added to my
happiness on earth.

With regard to the workmen, I am sure no more
industrious or well-meaning individuals exist, but

DRAINS AND WATERWORKS 29

I never saw people more lacking in imagination or
with a more irritating determination to adhere
rigidly to the “ plans,” regardless of consequences.
En passant, I may as well remark that, having
designed all the important parts of the house myself,
such as the drawing-room and the verandah, the
bay-windows and my own bedroom, I had left
such uninteresting details as the chimneys and stairs
to the contractor. Unlike the generality of women,
I had taken, I flatter myself, an intelligent interest
in the drains and waterworks, and by my insistence
on a hot-water supply at the top of the house had
created nothing short of a panic among the local
plumbers, whose only idea on the subject had
hitherto been limited to the mysterious working of
a “ geyser.” It was only on one of my many
returns to London that I discovered that the hot-
water supply installed with such a flourish of
trumpets would not have permitted of the bathing
of anything larger than a cat, and the consequent
change of cisterns, cylinders and tanks involved, I
need hardly remark, another speedy departure to
the scene of action, as well as an alarming increase
of expenditure.

The waterworks were, however, a comparatively
minor item. The plumbers, being Irish, were
sympathetic and were just as ready to pull anything
down as they were to put it up. They were full
of zeal and ardour, as were the tradespeople who
sent in their bills before the work was begun, while
the tax-collector served a notice demanding the
water-rate for the quarter preceding the laying of
the foundations of the house. Even the paper-
hanger threw up two other contracts to come to
me, and though I knew that it was a foregone
conclusion that he would leave me in the middle
of the job and not return for some months, I could

go THE WINDS OF TIME

not but feel flattered at his coming at aU. A cynic
once said that his ideal of social happiness was to
be asked everywhere and to go nowhere. I have
never met anyone but the paperhanger in question
who was in any way able to live up to this ideal.
The only available man of his trade in the neigh-
bourhood, with the whole county grovelling before
him, endeavouring by every means in their power
to flatter and cajole him into doing a little papering
or painting for them, he enjoyed nothing more than
promising to go to one, while ultimately going to
a second or disappointing them both by staying
at home. Curiosity brought him to me, a wooden
house being a sufficiently exciting novelty in those
parts ; the moment he became bored he left, and,
being utterly indifierent to mere money-making, the
probabilities of his return were slight.

It was not, however, in the vagaries of the Irish
workmen that my chief difficulties lay, but rather
in the stolidity of the English ones. As the work
proceeded and the house began to shape itself, cer-
tain defects naturally obtruded themselves on my
view, certain alterations and improvements sug-
gested themselves. With that terrible lack of
imagination inherent in the British workman,
every protest I raised was met with the reply that
it was “ exactly as it was in the plan.” Of course,
had I realized what an immutable fixture a plan
once agreed to was, I should have insisted in the
contract on leaving the size of the rooms optional
till almost the end, and on having transferable
doors and windows.

It was, however, when I suggested moving the
hall chimney that humanity — in the shape of the
contractor— was really staggered. Not having de-
signed that excrescence, it was palpably not my
fault that on coming out of the drawing-room door

CONTENT IN IRELAND 3 1

— ^if one did so at all exuberantly — one was bound
to knock one’s shoulder against the sharp edge of
the mantelshelf, catch one’s foot in the brass fender
and fall headlong against the banister rail of the
staircase. The proximity of the door, staircase and
chimney was, as I showed him, the only blot on
an otherwise admirably constructed residence. I
made a point of telling him this, as I wanted him
to know that I was thoroughly satisfied with my
own share of the plans. The fault obviously lay
with him. I told him so. He did not attempt to
deny the charge. Instead, he drew himself up and,
with an ingratiating smile, remarked that in view
of the great success of the rest of the house I must
forgive him. “ It is really the nicest little house I
ever built,” he added with pride, “ and the first in
which I’ve been able to carry out all my own ideas.''

As a matter of fact it was perfectly frightful and
not in the least what I had intended it to be. But
it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered in that en-
chanted land of lake and bog, of moor and moun-
tain, in which, after the Nothingness of London,
I had at last found not only an aim and an object,
but peace and infinite content. A new and a freer
air seemed to blow through my mind as well as in
my face as I lay back in the boat, ostensibly troUing
for trout but mostly watching the sun set in golden
glory over See Fin, while fairy music floated on the
evening air ; or wandering, as I often did, among
the mountains and bogs of Glencar, where, accord-
ing to an old poem :

Corn never enjoys autumn sun,

Bare and rugged high mountains from that to the West,

These are the parts St. Patrick never blessed,

an omission on the part of the saint which perhaps
accounts for the fact that the spirit which broods

THE WINDS OF TIME

32

over the bogs of Glencar is essentially pagan, and
as different from the spirit which hovers in gentle
and mysterious loneliness over the blue mountains
as the brown world of reality is different from the
of Promise we see stretching away beyond
our reach.

Brown bog and blue hill— where indeed, I often
wondered, could be found a truer symbol of life,
with its lonely wastes and its oozy depths into which
we sink in our struggle to reach the sunlit peaks
rising ever above us into the clouds ?

Pagan as this spirit of the bog undoubtedly is, it
has penetrated all unconsciously into the soul of the
most Catholic people in the world, the inhabitants of
Kerry, of whom it has been said that “ they give no
right and they take no wrong,” and in whose hearts
dwells the relentless spirit that we find in Greek
tragedy, the spirit of remorseless fate against which
it seems as useless to struggle as against the storms
of wind and rain which, sweeping up from the
Atlantic, shriek and whistle in impotent rage over
the desolation they are unable to destroy. Yet out
of this fataUsm — ^perhaps, indeed, because of it —
is engendered a great strength : the strength of
endurance which makes light of labour and hunger
and cold and sorrow, and is not cast down by
difficulty nor broken by defeat. In the pervasive
atmosphere of the bog, with its defiant barrenness
and its self-sufficing loneliness, all the commonplace
desires of life, all the smallnesses of human ambi-
tions imperceptibly faded away. The very ques-
tions which seem of so much moment in the toil
and stir of life — namely, what we are and why we
are and what we are to do — ^no longer perplexed and
worried me. It was enough that I was, that I
could see the flaming gold of the gorse, the crimson
purple of the loosestrife, that I could feel the fresh

THE HAPPY LIFE

33

fragrant air blowing in my face and smell the
pungent odour of the black turf sods. For the
moment, time and space were non-existent, and all
the problems of life seemed solved by the old turf-
cutter in his reply to an inquiry about the road,
“ Straight on, and the road will turn with you ” ;
an Irish answer, but like most Irish answers, ex-
pressive, and in this case expressive of more than
the road to Glencar. For in life, is not the road
that “ turns with us ” the road that we follow, the
road along which we travel to salvation or des-
truction, according as Destiny directs ?

W.T.

P

CHAPTER V

MAKING A GARDEN

L ife, however, was not all floating in the sunset
on an opalescent lake or walking on wonder
bridges over mountain-tops.

Colossal enterprises absorbed me by dayu There
was, for instance, the Garden.

There are, I believe, people who enjoy garden-
ing. Even I myself once imagined it to be a
delightful pursuit, but that was long before the
garden of my dreams took on a practical shape and
became a haunting reality.

Having no experience whatever oh the subject,
I engaged a lady gardener to assist me in laying
out the site, only to find that she knew even less
about it than I did. She was full of theories and
devoted hours to the working out of colour schemes,
one of which she planned for me consisting of
Hyacinthus candicans and Lobelia cardinalis, the
contrasting red and white of which she assured me
I should find intensely pleasing. Unfortunately,
the former flowering as it does in May and the
latter not conaing out till September, I was never
able to enjoy the effect on which she discoursed so
eloquently. Her practical knowledge was even
more hopeless than her colour schemes. When
putting up espaliers for the apple- and pear-trees,
as soon as the post on one side was fixed in the
ground the one at the other end rose out of it.
Nothing that she could devise would keep them

34

EARLY GARDEN WORK 35

both in at the same time and it was not imtil the
local plumber came to the rescue that the fruit
garden began to look less like the result of an
earthquake.

After I had got rid of her I began to work seri-
ously, endeavouring to absorb such information as
I could glean from books. I think I had every
book that was ever written on the subject of garden-
ing and they all contradicted each other. Visitors
who came to stay frequently complained that the
whole literature of the house consisted of gardening
books and Bradshaws. They did not want to
garden, and nothing would ever induce them to go
away, so no doubt they felt aggrieved. As a matter
of fact, both forms of literature were equally super-
fluous. A railway time-table in a place where there
are only two trains a day cannot be of much use
except as a hint to one’s guests, and a gardening
book for a garden which follows no known tradi-
tion serves no purpose but that of bewildering its
owner. Some day I felt it possible that I might
come to understand my garden ; but I was quite
certain I would never grasp even the most element-
ary book on the subject. At one time I actually
attempted to follow the directions contained in
some of them. I sowed seeds in April in gentle heat
and pricked them out in May, subsequently plant-
ing the seedlings in a sheltered bed composed of a
leafy compost of rich loam mixed with bone manure,
placing the plants, when well established, in rows
6 inches apart, or something to that effect. In
addition to all these precautions I watered and
“ mulched ” and divided and pruned and dis-
budded as nearly as possible according to each of
the conflicting theories contained in the seventeen
handbooks with which I started my gardening
career. I am more experienced now and fed some-

THE WINDS OF TIME

36

what like the old Irish woman who was recom-
mended by the parish priest to spray her potato
field. “ To plaze his Riverince,” she said, “ I
sprayed one half of it — the other half I left to
God.”

By the end of the summer I felt I might do
worse than try the same experiment and leave the
rest of my gardening to God. Thoroughly ex-
hausted physically and mentally by my efforts, I
came to the conclusion that the only gardens one
enjoys are those belonging to one’s friends, and
that all the rhapsodies one reads about gardening
in general are written over a blazing fire on
tempestuous winter nights by people of exuberant
imagination and no knowledge whatever on the
subject. To read any of these glowing descriptions
one would imagine that a garden was a place of
divine repose, a refuge from the carking cares of
the world, a nirvana of contentment in which one’s
higher instincts matured like rosebuds in the
gracious warmth of the summer sun and one’s
soul developed in the soothing caress of the soft
west wind :

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot !

Rose plot,

Fringed pool,

Fem’d grot.

The veriest school
Of Peace

as some idiot once wrote. But though he expressed
himself very charmingly I very much doubt whether
the poet in question had ever had any practical
eqierience of gardening. Now, I had ; and I
must candidly say that I did not in the least feel
that my garden waus a “ school of peace.” On the
contrary, I should describe it as a perennial night-
mare. Most people who are addicted to unpleasant

MORAL EFFECTS

37

dreams know what it is to try in their sleep to
catch a train which invariably steams out of the
station as they dash breathlessly on to the plat-
form. My garden had exactly the same elusive
quality as that nightmarish train. In no circum-
stances did I ever succeed in catching the effect
which, for the time being, I happened to be pursu-
ing. It was always just about to express itself,
but somehow or other it never did. If it had not
been for an incurable belief in a future full of
radiant possibilities, I do not believe that I could
have kept up for another hour the exhausting and
unequal struggle with Nature which the possession
of a garden entails.

As it is, I am perfectly convinced that, far from
expanding, my soul stultified, while my higher
instincts certainly became paralysed under the
demoralizing influence of competitive gardening.
Far from the amiable tendencies of my nature
(such as they are) developing, I found myself
acquiring new and thoroughly vicious quahties.
My whole life was embittered for several days that
summer because a neighbour had a magnificent
crop of sweet-pea, while mine was a complete
failure. Up to that time I had always looked upon
Hm as a delightful old gentleman. From that
moment, however, I conceived an intense dislike
for him — a dislike which was certainly not decreased
by the fact of his subsequently sending me over
large bunches of sweet-pea every second day for a
month. The following summer, I am happy to
say, our positions were reversed ; but it was only
as I walked him up and down between the rows
and saw his hungry gaze fixed on all the new
varieties deliberately purchased with the intention
of' exciting his jealousy, that I realized the depth of
vindictiveness to which gardening had reduced me.

^8 THE WINDS OF TIME

In these circumstances it would be idle to pre-
tend that gardening has an ennobling effect on the
mind. But if it did not ennoble me and did not
bring me the peace and contentment about which
the poet so feelingly sings, on the other hand my
garden never bored me. It worried me by day
and it kept me awake by night ; it made me swear
and it made me weep, and it would have taken
very little more to make me scream. But it did
not make me yawn ; by which it may be con-
cluded that, if baffling, my garden had also a
certain element of attraction for me. For one
thing, I never knew what was going to happen in
it, in which respect it may be said to have expressed
something of the uncertainty of its owner. I never
know what I am going to do next, and no more
did my herbaceous border, in which the hollyhocks
came into bloom in October, while the dahlias
were over in July. Personally I am quite unable
to account for the fantastic conduct adopted by
Nature in my ill-regulated garden. When especi-
ally bewildered I used to write to the nursery from
which I had originally procured the plants or the
trees. The reply was invariably couched in respect-
ful but utterly non-committal terms. Messrs. Dash
thanked me for my esteemed communication and
begged to inform me that the state of the flower
or the tree to which I referred was “ in all pro-
bability caused by the unusual climatic conditions
of the past season.” These conditions sometimes
took the form of the “ excessive drought ” ; some-
times that of the “ tmprecedented rainfall.” In
any case, Messrs. Dash were careful to impress me
with the fact that my “ further valued commands ”
would be esteemed and would receive their “ best
care and attention.”

CHAPTER VI

TRAVELS — .A MOTOR TOUR IN FRANCE — SICILY — ^INDIA
— THE DURBAR — ^A PURDAH PARTY — “ RANJI ”

A COUNTRY house of one’s own to go to
settled once and for all the question of sum-
mer holidays, which so far we had usually spent
paying visits in Ireland and Scotland. But we had
got into the habit of going abroad in the spring,
generally to Italy, where we had spent some de-
lightful Easters with ray cousins. Sir Willoughby and
Lady Wade, in their enchanting villa at Maiano,
on one of the hills above Florence. On his father’s
death in 1906, Home came in for the title and
what Sir Seton had left of the family fortune.
Early in the following year we invested in a 28-
h.p. Daimler and started, with a couple of friends,
Gertrude Reynolds (now Mrs. Harrison-Hughes)
and Charles Russell (son of Lord Russell of Kill-
owen, the famous judge), on a motor tour to the
South of France. Unfortunately, on the very first
day, we met with an accident, colliding with a
French car as we rounded a corner on our wrong
side, a not unusual mistake for an English chauf-
feur to make on a first experience of the different
regulations prevailing abroad, but one which in-
volved us in a broken front axle and necessitated
our continuing our journey by rail. To the end,
a malignant fate pursued us, the engine of our
traia breaking down and leaving us for hours in
a siding within fifty miles of our destination and

THE WINDS OF TIME

when, at 1.30 a.m., after a long and wearisome
journey, as we were being conveyed up the hill to
our hotel, the horse in the omnibus collapsed, it
looked as if destiny were making a final protest
against our ever reaching the goal for which we
had set out under such different auspices.

After all the obstacles thrust in our path, it
might have been supposed by the superstitious
that some terrible misfortune would overtake us
as the result of persisting on a journey which Fate
was obviously doing her best to circumvent. On
the contrary. Fortune smiled on us to the last.
We had hired a car to take us to Avignon, where
the Daimler was to meet us on the completion of
repairs. From there we were to start on a tour
of Provence and the Chateaux of the Loire. At
the appointed hour, the hired car drew up at the
door of our hotel. A last visit to the Casino hav-
ing resulted in a final run of luck for us all, unable
to tear ourselves away from the tables neither
Gertrude nor I had any time to pack our belong-
ings. One by one, our garments were carefully
carried down from our rooms by a procession of
porters and eventually piled up in the car, which,
with our trunks and a large collection of floral
tributes from numerous admiring friends, presented
the varied appearance of a guard’s van, a florist’s
window and a second-hand clothes shop. A ‘large
and admiring crowd having gathered in the street,
Gertrude, for whom we had been waiting for hours,
at last appeared. Her veil was thrown back, and
as she regally advanced, with a hot-water bag in
one hand and a large hat from which there flowed
yards of pale green chiffon in the other, she bowed
graciously to the right and to tiie left as she passed
through the rows of assembled porters, concierges
and lift-boys. Taking her seat ins the car, and

CRIME AND COINCIDENCE 41

arranging the numerous rugs round her, she had
just intimated with a wave of her hand that the
car might proceed, when down the steps tripped
the hotel manager, shouting in stentorian tones,
“ Madame n’a pas paye ! ”

A suppressed giggle from the assembled crowd
broke the unearthly silence which ensued. After
which Madame, wholly unperturbed, with many
apologies for her forgetfulness, proceeded to look
for her purse. Alas ! it was not to be found. One
by one, the various articles of attire, bouquets and
hold-alls, dressing-bags and portmanteaux, were
deposited on the pavement. At last, at the very
bottom of the car, the purse was found, and,
Madame having settled her week’s bill, amid cheers
and shouts of encouragement, we drove off.

The rest of our tour came off according to plan,
and I remember very little about it except the
Chateaux and some of the stories of crime and
criminals with which Charles Russell used to enter-
tain us in the evenings. One which especially

sticks in my memory is of a Dr. G who lived

in Cork and whose wife died and was duly buried
without any suspicion as to the manner of her
death having been aroused, except in the'mind of
one of the maids, who went over to a situation in Lon-
don when the Doctor closed the house. One day,
soon after, she was out walking when it began to
rain. She had no umbrella, so, finding herself
outside a small Roman Catholic Church, she took
refuge inside. Seeing a wedding was in progress,
she took a seat, and presently down the aisle walked
Dr. C and his bride, who had been his chil-

dren’s governess. The maid’s suspicions having
been now confirmed, she communicated with the
police in Cork, with the result that the body was
dug up and analysed, and, traces of poison having

THE WINDS OF TIME

42

been found, the Doctor was arrested and in due
course hanged.

Such a chain of coincidences leading up to the
detection of a crime seems too strange to be true
but is not, I believe, unusual. This, at any rate,
was only one of many extraordinary instances
which Charles Russell had come across in the
course of his professional career as a lawyer of
considerable experience.

* * Sit ❖ *

The following year we went farther afield, tak-
ing the car to SicHy ; two friends, Edward Hudson
and Hagberg Wright (of the London Library),
accompanying us on a tour which everybody ad-
vised us not to take. Nothing being so conducive
to enterprise of any sort as a spirit of opposition,
it followed as a matter of course that the more we
were warned against going, the more determined
we were to face the impassable roads, the brigands,
the hostility of the inhabitants and the many diffi-
culties we were assured we would meet with in a
place which, in 1908, was, from a motoring point
of view, a more or less unknown land.

Leaving London one day early in April, we
made our way across France by the well-known
route through Abbeville, Beauvais, Versailles,
Melun, Autun, Macon, Lyons and Avignon to
Monte Carlo. Of our progress on this part of
our travels, one can only say that it was reminis-
cent of the Irish porter who, as he banged the
door of the railway carriage, announced to the
disconcerted passengers that “ this thrain won’t
shtop anywhere.” So far as the weather was con-
cerned, there was certainly very little inducement
to linger, until we got to Italy, where our hearts
were cheered by an occasional gleam of elusive

cc

LE SPORT

5?

43

sunshine. After a couple of days at Naples, hav-
ing been warned against the roads of Calabria,
we shipped the car to Palermo and continued our
own journey there by rail.

Having duly exhausted the sights of Palermo,
which we made our headquarters for the first
week of our stay in Sicily, we set out one glorious
morning for Segesta. On leaving the town we
followed the road to Monreale, famous for its
mosaics, its cloisters and its gorgeous view of the
Conca d’Oro, the golden, lemon-covered valley
stretching away to where Palermo at the foot of
Monte Pellegrino juts out into the blue sea. Wind-
ing round the sides of a high mountain the scenery
grew more and more beautiful, every turn bring-
ing a new revelation in the way of wild floweis
and geranium hedges, every village a new shock
to our nervous systems.

When, on arriving in Sicily, we asked a resident
his opinion as to the possibilities of motoring on
the island, he cheerfully replied, “ Pour I’auto ce

n’est pas le pays, mais si vous desirez le sport ! ”

“ Le sport ” being a term capable of many in-
terpretations, with, however, only one end, we
were consequently more or less prepared for a
certain amount of bloodshed. What we were not
prepared for, however, was the suicidal tendency
of every dog and chicken in Sicily, or for the
pandemonixun which otir arrival caused in every
village through which we passed. At the first
sound of the horn every man rushed into the
street, every woman on to her balcony, every child
screamed on its highest note, every dog dashed
barking and yelping under the wheels, while every
chicken tore frantically backwards and forwards
in front of the car. The open road, if somewhat
less deafening, was even more perilous, for every

THE WINDS OF TIME

44

mule we met ran away, every horse stood on its
hind legs, while the occupants of every cart were
all but precipitated into the abyss which yawns
on the side of every mountain road in Sicily. In
these circumstances, we considered ourselves dis-
tinctly fortunate in arriving at our destination
without serious injury to anything but our own
nervous constitutions.

Leaving the car on the roadside, we climbed up
the footpath to where, alone among the desolate
mountains, the famous Temple of Segesta has stood
in majestic grandeur for two thousand years and
more. So old, indeed, is this monument, that
neither the date of its birth nor that of the city
which once surrounded it is known. Of the latter,
not a trace remains to-day, yet it was once upon
a time, 400 or 500 b.c., a town of great import-
ance ; and twice it was almost, owing to the in-
dependence of its inhabitants, the undoing of the
Greeks in Sicily : first, when it provoked the ill-
fated Athenian expedition under Alcibiades ; and
secondly, when, by appealing to Carthage for help
against Silenus, it led to the invasion which, under
Hannibal, the son of Cisco, made of its hated rival
nothing but a memory. A century later, however,
retribution fell on the Segestans at the hands of
Agathocles, the great adventurer, who, in despera-
tion at the failure of his attempts to establish his
tyranny in Sicily, levelled the town to the ground,
torturing and massacring the inhabitants, sparing
only the most beautiful to be sold as slaves. Stand-
ing under the shadow of the columns of the vast
temple it was impossible not to feel something of
that spirit of desolation which, stiU brooding over
the lovely landscape, seemed to blur everything
with a sense of sadness.

Returning to Palermo that night, we started on

AT PALERMO

45

the following morning on the complete tour of the
island which we had mapped out, and which was
to lead us by Girgenti and Syracuse eventually to
Taormina. In making our plans, however, we had
not made any allowance for the Unexpected, that
disturbing element which in life, and especially in
motor tours, is so apt to upset the most simple
of “ programmes.” To state our misfortunes and
adventures briefly, we began by killing one dog
and wounding a second, while we all but caused
the death of two men, a woman, a child, a horse
and a mule, and by the time we had reached
Misilmeri, where a runaway mule turned a com-
plete somersault in the air at our approach, over-
turning the cart, flinging the driver across the
street and sending boxes of lemons flying in every
direction, “le. sport” seemed a singularly inade-
quate term to apply to our motoring experiences.
Though Misilmeri was not much more than a
suburb of Palermo, we had lost our way twice
before we got there. We were, however, to do it
even more efficaciously later on when, in despera-
tion, we availed ourselves of the services of a re-
tired soldier, who offered to conduct us as far as
Gorleone, a town situated about half-way to Gir-
genti. With so much confidence did his presence
on the step inspire us that it was only after we
had been running for hours in torrents of rain over
desolate mountain passes, down into precipitous
valleys, along a wild, deserted road which appar-
ently wound its way round Infinity, that we began
to wonder whether our guide was perhaps after aU
a brigand in disguise about to decoy us into a
robber stronghold. At last we met some peasants
on mules. We stopped and asked the way to Cor-
leone. They pointed back in the direction from
which we had come. As there had not been a

^5 THE WINDS OF TIME

turn in the road for quite twenty miles our hearts
began to fail us. It was now five o’clock and we
had been travelling for seven hours. We asked
where we were. “ Quite close to Palermo,” they
replied. Nobody spoke, not even the guide. It
was no good abusing him. Judging from his con-
trition, expressed on his face, he had meant well ;
but, like many other people with excellent inten-
tions, he had lacked the necessary knowledge to
carry them out. He had assured us that he knew
every inch of the island, whereas, as a matter of
fact, he did not even know the way out of his own
village, Marineo, where we had picked him up.
In the circumstances there was nothing to do but
to dismiss him, to return to Palermo for the night,
to go to a different hotel from the one we had
quitted in the morning and to do our best to
imagine ourselves in a new place. To this move
we subsequently owed the most delightful of motor-
ing experiences, for at the Hotel des Palmes we
were fortunate enough to meet Signor Ragusa, a
well-known motorist of racing fame, who promised
not only to show us the way to Girgenti but to
take us, a few days later, right across the island
by the mountain route from Palermo to Taormina.

The next morning, therefore, we made a fresh
start, our new guide in his 6o-h,p. racing Darracq
leading the way. Our progress on this occasion
was somewhat different from what it had been on
the previous day. It had poured all night and
the roads were literally a sea of mud, through
which Signor Ragusa splashed in front of us, clear-
ing dogs and chickens in every direction and even
sending the inhabitants flying into their houses for
protection from the shower-bath of mud spurting
from under the wheels of his car. As for the horses
and muleSy they were too deafened by the noise

GIRGENTI

47

emanating from his exhaust and too paralysed by
the rapidity with which he flew past them to take
any notice of us as we tore on in a wild endeavour
to keep up with the racing car, which every now
and again shot round a corner and disappeared
into space. The pursuit only lasted, however, a
short time, for we had not gone many miles before
we found our guide in trouble on the side of the
road. Mud had got into the engine and, the spark-
ing having also gone wrong, he was eventually
obliged to return to Palermo, leaving us to find
the way once more to Girgenti. This time we
were more fortunate, and after running through
Gorleone and climbing 3,000 feet up into the moun-
tains past Prizzi and Bivona, where we burst a
tyre and so provided the inhabitants with more
excitement than they had ever experienced before
in their lives, we arrived at the Hotel des Temples
in time for tea.

Of all Sicily, Girgenti is the gem. From the
point of scenery it is, of course, not to be com-
pared to Taormina or Segesta or many of the
other beautiful spots in the island. But with the
exception of the Parthenon it is doubtful if any
more marvellous temples are to be found than the
three situated within half a mile of each other on
the rocky land overlooking the deep blue sea and
the Port of Empedocles. If there is a genius of a
place — and who has not felt it and known it at
some time or other? — ^its influence most certainly
cannot be denied at Girgenti. Just as in Provence
the spirit of Rome seems to make itself felt, even
more than in Rome, so does the spirit of Greece
seem to linger in Sicily to-day. Not only in the
ruins of the beautiful temples is that harmony and
imity which were the chief characteristics of Greek
life expressed ; it is breathed as well in the land-

THE WINDS OF TIME

48*

scape as in the atmosphere. The whole effect of
Girgenti is of a golden glory. The sunset glow,
the temples themselves, the wild flowers sprea ding
like a carpet at their feet, the modem town gleam-
ing through the columns of Concordia, are all the
colour of burnished gold. If it be true, as Omar
says :

that never blows so red
The rose as where some buried Caesar bled ;

That every hyacinth the garden wears
Dropt in’ her lap from some once lovely head,

then, indeed, the flowers at Girgenti may well
represent the last resting-place on earth of the
gods and goddesses, dead, alas ! hke the men who
raised the temples to their everlasting honour and
glory.

It had been our intention on leaving Girgenti
to run to Syracuse, but, hearing that no petrol was
to be obtained there, and having been warned
against the bad roads, we were reluctantly obliged
to give up this part of our tour and return to
Palermo by the same road by which we had come.
Stopping another night at the Hotel des Palmes,
where we picked up Signor Ragusa, we left on the
following morning for Taormina. Anything more
beautiful than this run it would be impossible to
imagine. For the first few miles we followed the
lovely coast road to Termini, with bamboos and
geraniums growing down almost to the very edge
of the shore, then, striking inland, we made our
way oyer tlxe Targa-Florio course up into the
Madonian Mountains, past wonderful hill towns
and through valleys which were a marvel of luxuri-
ance and blossom, round through the snow-clad
slopes of Etna, to where a lava-strewn waste bore
witness to the desolation and ruin caused by the
great volcano.

TAORMINA

49

The sun was setting as, leaving Nelson’s Duchy
of Bronte on our right, we began to descend to-
wards Randazzo, and it was quite dark by the
time we had climbed to the top of the cliff on
which Taormina is perched. But if, owing to the
darkness, we missed what we were told was the
best bit of scenery on the way, we had absorbed
too much beauty as it was to bear a grudge against
the night, which, after aU, was the cause of new
sensations of delight when we awoke next morning
to our first glimpse of Taormina. Also, in a way,
we had accomplished something of a feat, and even
established a record, for apparendy nobody had
ever before gone from Palermo to Taormina in
one day. Certainly not one of the crowd who
saw us off in the morning believed that the heavy
car, with its five passengers, its weight of luggage
and its spare cans of petrol, would succeed in
reaching its destination that night. For though
the actual distance was only 175 miles, our road
lay over high mountains ; twice we ascended
heights of 4,000 feet and at no time, owing to the
twists and turns of the road, were we able to ex-
ceed a pace of twenty-five miles an hour, our
average speed not being more than twenty. As
it was, it was an unforgetable day of wonderful
scenery, of gotgeous vegetation and blazing sun-
shine, with Etna in her pure white coldness domin-
ating everything, and only the faintest, almost
indiscernible curl of smoke against the deep blue
sky betraying the fire smouldering away deep down
in her breast.

Taormina is the one place which never seems to
disappoint anybody. It is true it was not ati ideal
motoring centre ; but even the tourist must rest
sometimes, and where could one rest more divinely ?
It is true it was overcrowded with tourists, while

B

W.T.

THE WINDS OF TIME

50

the numerous hotels and villas of uncompromising
hideosity are certainly a blot on the landscape.
But even with these drawbacks Taormina remains
unique and individual, wdth a soul that cannot
ever be lost even in the babel of the American and
Gherman invasion, wdth a theatre which, if it is
more Roman than Greek, breathes all the poetry
of classical antiquity, with gardens which in their
blaze of colour and waves of scent produce no less
intoxicating feelings of beauty and delight.

From Taormina we motored to Messina, a road
which ran almost the whole way through a suc-
cession of villages, connected with each other by
a series of ditches ; and from Messina we shipped
the car back by sea to London, returning ourselves
by train, thus bringing to an end a tour which
was altogether delightful and full of interest from
beginning to end. If there were drawbacks to
motoring in Sicily they were not very serious ones,
and they were more than compensated for by the
wonderful beauty and interest of the island. As
for brigands, I regret to say we never met one,
though the popular illusion on the subject was still
kept up by the fact of everybody in out-of-the-way
districts being armed. It may be that the Sicilians
pursue a deadly warfare with each other, but so
far as the stranger is concerned a more kindly,
courteous race does not exist, or one more amicably
disposed towards the enterprising motorist.

4 : ^ 3k

At the end of 191 1 we went out to India for the
Durbar, as the guests of the Jam Sahib of Nawa-
nagar, better known as “ Ranji.” The voyage was
more amusing than voyages to the East usually
are, as the Maloja was practically a Durbar ship
and all her passengers were travelling for pleasure

RANJI’S HOSPITALITY 5 1

and were not gloomy and disgruntled soldiers and
civil servants returning to India at the end of their
leave. There were a number of Scottish peere and
peeresses on board who took themselves very seri-
ously ; the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton, Lord
and Lady Cassillis and the Butes, who had brought
their piper with them, and who all danced High-
land reels together every night, much to the
aimoyance of the other passengers, who could not
dance reels and who loathed bagpipes — ^which in
any case seemed strangely inappropriate in the
In^an Ocean. One night, to everybody else’s joy,
an exasperated American woman hurled five sofa
cushions one after the other at the piper’s head.
The outrage was deeply resented by the Highland
contingent, but it had the effect of silencing the
pipes for the rest of the voyage. Unfortunately
they broke out again in camp at Delhi, where they
were appreciated even less than on board ship.
Nobody, however, had the nerve to repeat the
American lady’s experiment.

Landing in Bombay was exactiy like being let
loose in the monkey-house at the Zoo, but in time
we were rescued out of the jabbering crowd by
emissaries of the Jam Sahib, who conveyed us to
the Taj Mahal Hotel, where he had engaged a
suite of rooms for us for the night, and a special
carriage in the train to take us to Delhi ; this was
only a foretaste of the marvellous hospitality he
showed us throughout the whole of our stay in his
camp and later in his own home at Jamnagar.

We were a large party in the camp, which con-
sisted of two rows of tents with a garden down
the middle. Among our fellow-guests were Lord
and Lady Londesborough, with their charming
daughter. Lady Irene Denison (now Marchioness
of Garisbrooke), Sir Arthur Priestley (M.P. for

THE WINDS OF TIME

52

Grantham) and other cricketing friends of the Jam
Sahib whose names I have forgotten. We had
enormous dinner-parties every night, usually last-
ing about three hours. The Jam Sahib himself
lived on Benger’s Food and must have been horribly
bored having to spend so much time over it.

We had splendid seats for the state entry, but
nobody saw the King. The Queen was all alone
in the carriage and everybody was asking where
he was. The procession stopped just in front of
us ; and an address was replied to by somebody
in a group of staff officers on horseback, who
might have been anybody but who, one eventually
realized, was the King. The Indian Princes were
terribly aimoyed about it — not one of them recog-
nized him, while most of the natives, rather natur-
ally, mistook the trumpeter for him, the latter
being quite the most prominent person in the
procession. Thirty thousand Moslems prepared to
prostrate themselves on the ground never saw him
at all. It was said that the reason for his being
kept in the background was fear of an attempt
being made on his life, but as every suspected
person in India (and there were thousands of them)
had been locked up before he arrived, the pre-
cautions seemed a bit overdone.

The Jam Sahib dined the next night with the
King and Queen, and the Qjieen said to him she
was afraid they had made a mistake and that the
King should not have ridden ; to which the Jam
Sahib replied ; “ Mistakes will always occur,

Ma’am, when the right people are not consulted.”

Various other mistakes, attributed to the Viceroy,
were perpetrated on other occasions, especially at
the Unveiling, where none of the Gffiefs could see
anytfaiii^ at all, the best places having been assigned
to Eng^h people who could see the King and

THE DELHI DURBAR

53

Queen any day at home. The Durbar itself, how-
ever, was splendidly organized and a marvellous
success. It was a perfecdy wonderful sight, and
so was the garden-party where the King and Queen
sat, in their ermine robes with their crowns on
their heads, on a white marble dais, looking exactly
like a king and queen in the fairy tales of one’s
childhood.

Standing out in contrast to the magnificence
generally prevailing in the camps of the Chiefs, the
Imperial one, which was draped in crumpled blue
muslin and furnished in the favourite style of the
Tottenham Court Road, looked like a second-rate
English seaside hotel. India, however, is like that
— or so it seemed to me — a mixture of barbaric
splendour and modern shoddiness.

The King did not call on any of the Chiefs, but
sent Lord Hardinge instead. The day he came
to our camp we were allowed to watch the pro-
cedure through a hole in the curtain. He and the
Jam Sahib sat on a throne under a canopy and
exchanged remarks in the Ollendorff manner.
Then the Jam Sahib hung garlands round his-
neck, the A.D.C.S were all presented and everybody
looked very foolish — ^nobody more so than the
Viceroy.

The day of the garden-party we were taken to
see the “ purdah ladies ” on their roof. They
were nearly all children of fourteen or fifteen years
of age, with their hair done in pigtails ; most of
diem wore voluminous pink trousers and had
pearls in their noses. Another day we went to
a tea-party given by one of the Ranees. Like
those of most people finding themselves for the
first time in the East, my ideas on the subject of
Indian women were of the haziest descriptioiv
and I was flabbergasted to discover that she drove

the winds of time

54

her own motor, while the scene inside her tent bore
no resemblance to the “ Arabian Nights ” concep-
tion I had previously cherished of an Indian zenana.

In the middle of the large reception tent, seated
on a wonderfully wrought silver chair, sat our
hostess, engaged with two other Maharanees in
a violent discussion on the higher education of
women. Round one of the large tea-tables in a
far comer, a group of English peeresses in the
latest Paris fashions were listening to recitations
by a Hindu poetess of her own poems, written
in English, perfectly delivered, with faultless enun-
ciation. Presiding over the silver tea-pot was an
Rnglish lady-doctor who, in the intervals of pouring
out tea and handing round cakes, effected intro-
ductions and acted in general as mistress of the
ceremonies, while from one table to another
flitted the Maharanee’s little granddaughter, aged
nine, who could talk equally well in three lan-
guages, and who held delate views on the
importance of having shaken hands with the
Queen-Empress.

At first sight one felt that, if it had not been
for the difierence in dress, the gorgeous satins and
flowing saris, the scene in no way differed from
that round any English afternoon tea-table. But
almost insensibly one became conscious of an
“ atmosphere,” of a subtle distinction, not confined
to mere questions of dress, between this particular
tea-party and any other one had ever attended
before. Instinctively one felt oneself in the pres-
ence of change — in an atmosphere of unrest which,
if stiU vague and undefined, was, nevertheless,
slowly but surely creeping through the carefully
guarded screen shutting off the Maharanee’s “ pur-
dah” tent from the clamour and chatter of the
rest of the great Coronation Durbar camp.

PURDAH

55

The Woman Movement was still in its infancy
in India. The Hindu lady who, thirsting for the
emancipation of her sex, journeyed to England
in order to throw in her lot with the Suffragettes,
was horror-struck, when she arrived, at the pre-
vailing discontent. “ Your husbands eat at table
with you,” she exclaimed, “ they drive in carriages
beside you ; what more can you possibly want ? ”
Being women, it is highly probable that in India
they did not know what they wanted any more than
did those in England ; but looking round the
brilliantly arrayed assembly, taking stock of the
intelligence, the interest and the cmiosity displayed
in the often beautiful and always animated faces
of those present, one inevitably asked one’s self,
“ How long can the present system last ? How
long will it be before the women of India cast aside
their veils and tear down the screens shutting
them out from the world, from knowledge, from
life?”

Almost as if I had uttered the thought in my
mind aloud came the answer from my neighbour
at the tea-table — a. quiet, undistinguished-looking
person who, in spite of her white skin and European
clothes, produced an impression of Oriental in-
scrutability. “ Of course,” she remarked, reading
my mind without the slightest hesitation, “this
sort of thing can’t possibly continue. As soon as
these old women ” — ^waving her hands in the
direction of a group of dowager Ranees — “ are
dead, the ‘ purdah ’ system will go. It is not the
men who wish to keep it up, but the women them-
selves, the older generation, who would rather die
than allow their faces to be seen in public.”

Wondering all the time who she was, I listened
to my neighbour as she told me of “ purdah ” life,
of the appalling ignorance of Indian women, an

^5 THE WINDS OF TIME

enormous proportion of whom were unable even
to read or write, of their ignorance even in the
management of their children, citing as an instance
the case of one Maharanee who, in a moment of
absentmindedness, had sat on her baby and had
expressed extreme surprise on subsequently finding
she had smothered it. Incidentally, while dis-
cussing the occupations and amusements of the
“purdah” ladies, she alluded to a skating-rink
she had provided for them “ at home,” whereupon,
seeing my obvious mystification at her identity,
she disclosed the fact that her husband was the

Maharajah of J , and bidding me good-bye,

begged me to come and stay with her in her hus-
band’s state for a long visit at the end of the month.
Unfortunately — or perhaps fortimately — I was not
able to accept the invitation, which, alluring as it
soimded, might, perhaps, have been connected
with social disadvantages, the lady’s career having
been, as I subsequently discovered, somewhat
chequered before she descended in a parachute at
Rangoon into the heart and affections of the
Maharajah, whose last and most cherished wife
she had lately become.

Such cases are, however, rare, and I only quote
my English Maharanee acquaintance as an amusing
exception and for what she told me of “ purdah,”
information about which is not alw,ays forthcoming
in India. For if there is one subject which no
Indian man will discuss it is that of his womenkind.
Even in the bosom of his own family it is not
etiquette for a man to ask after the health of his
brother’s wife, although he may know her to be
smously ill. To discuss, therefore, with strangers,
the doings of your female relations wotild be an
unpardonable breach of etiquette.

The ^e of advertisement had not then arrived

INDIAN GIRLS

57

in India. Sooner or later the Indian woman will,
no doubt, afford the same subject for illuminating
conversation as the English woman affords in
London clubs and coimtry-house smoking-rooms.
In the meantime she was at an interesting stage
of her development. The languorous life of the
zenana had been stirring for some time past with
a vague unrest, to which the great Durbar suddenly
gave life and meaning. Ten years before, only
half a dozen Maharanees had taken part in the
celebration of King Edward’s Coronation ; on
the occasion of King George’s over a hundred were
encamped on the plains of Delhi. Their reception
by the Qjieen-Empress, the prominence invariably
given by the ELing-Emperor to his Consort, his
leading her by the hand on official occasions, the
homage expected and received by Her Majesty
from the ruling Chiefs, all made a lasting impression
on the leading women of India.

At that time their cry was all for education. In
it they saw, as the Englishwoman of forty years
before had seen, the panacea for all iUs. Improved
conditions of life it would certainly bring them, a
larger sphere of activity and a reduction of infant
mortaUty — ^but, one wondered, would it bring
them happiness ? From what one saw of the few
cases of Indian girls who had been educated in
England, the future seemed full of apprehension.
The fate of one little Princess m particular was the
subject of general interest at the Durbar. Brought
up at an Enghsh school and accustomed to the
healthy life of an English girl in society, she re-
turned to India to become, under pathetic con-
ditions, the wife of a great Chief Her hockey
stick, her “ sweater ” and her sailor hat were
already in the native museum. The Princess,
however, was not yet herself in the duefs zenana,

^8 the winds of time

and from all accounts there would be trouble if
she ever did get there, which seemed unlikely.

Yet in every aspect of life there are com-
pensations, and as the Begum of Bhopal— India’s
only woman ruler— said when I expressed surprise
at her rigid adherence to the “ purdah ” veil,
“ My veil very useful — save much trouble. English
lady when she go out paint face, powder nose, curl
hair, make herself beautiful— purdah lady put
down veil ! ”

The Durbar over, and the King and Queen and
the Chiefs having departed, leaving more than a
httle dust behind them, we also left with the Jam
Sahib for Nawanagar. The special train was due
to start at ii a.m. We sat in it for hours at Delhi
station. It was late in the afternoon when it finally
started, and we heard afterwards that the delay
was caused by the railway authorities who, tired
of providing special trains for Maharajahs who
never paid for them, had demanded cash down
for this particular one. The Jam Sahib, naturally
not having several hundred poimds in his pocket,
had not been able to comply with this request,
and it had taken- some hours to negotiate a mort-
gage on one of his own railways, which was the
only alternative payment the Company would
accept. The delay in starting, however, was
nothing to those which occurred later, our journey
occupying the best part of two days and two nights
as, owing to the Jam Sahib’s mother having con-
sulted an astrologer who had predicted it would
be unlucky for us to arrive on a Wednesday, we
had to spend nearly the whole of that day in sidings
admiring the scenery, which largely consisted of
sand.

On arriving in his capital I was given the seat
of honour in the carriage beside him for his state

AT JAHINAGAR 59

entry, and had the greatest difficulty in restraining
myself from bowing to right and left as his subjects
prostrated themselves in the dust before him.

It had not rained for eighteen months at Jam-
nagar and the whole countryside was an arid
sandy desert ; even the lakes we were always being
told should have been there had completely dis-
appeared. It was not really hot and there was
plenty of wind, so I suppose it must have been
the want of rain in the air which made the atmo-
sphere so peculiar that one could not sleep. We
all lived in btmgalows in the garden of the Palace.
Ours was next the Jam Sahib’s private Zoo where
the lions roared all night, the noise they made
being, however, preferable to that of the sentry
outside our window, who was violently sick all
night and every night — ^at least I thought that was
what was the matter with him, but people used
to India said native sentries always coughed like
that.

On Christmas Day we went to the coast, but
the sea, like the lakes, had apparently dried up,
as we saw nothing but mud. The tide, it seemed,
went out for four miles. However, we poked about
in the rocks for crabs, which we had cooked for
tea, and in the evening the tide came in and we
bathed. The Indian Ocean being, however, more
sticky than wet, bathing in it did not really refresh
one, and I have often felt damper in a Kerry
shower than I did swimming in the Gulf of Kutch.

In spite of the drought and the heat we had a
really marvellous time. Indian hospitality is pro-
verbial, Jind the Jam Sahib was not only a princely
host but one of the kindest and most thoughtful.
In his silver carriage, which he had expressly
made for the Durbar and which cost 75,000 rupees,
in his long coat of white brocade and his blue

THE WINDS OF TIME

6o

turban set with diamonds and emeralds as large
as pigeon’s eggs, and a ^^i 5,000 pearl necklace
round his neck, he remained in my memory as the
last word in Oriental magnificence. When I next
met him it was in the Fish Department at Harrods
and he was attired in a blue suit and a straw hat.
The national costume of Imperial Britain seemed
an outrage to that memory, the Fish Department
an incongruous background after glittering Delhi.
But I am not sure that “ Ranji,” the popular hero
of cricket-loving England, was not a happier ma-n
in his flat over Harrods than the Jam Sahib of
Nawanagar, who must often have suffered from
the loneliness of rulers and potentates with minds
in advance of their time and their country.

CHAPTER VII

KERRY SOCIETY — ^THE SKELLIGS

G oing away to other lands makes one appre-
ciate one’s own aU the more on returning
to it. The coming back to Caragh never 'dis-
appointed. Nothing I had seen on my travels
ever thrilled me quite so much as the first glimpse
of the Lake glinting through the trees from the
narrow winding road above the shores, the view
from the terrace of the fir-clad island and the blue
encircling mountains. Life in London became less
irksome for the feeling that within a sixteen-hour
journey lay an enchanted land to which one could
repair at any time. Travelling to Ireland was less
harassing in those days than it is now. There
were day-boats from Fishguard to Rosslare and
there were no irritating Customs to be faced at
dawn. Visitors could come, and often did, for
week-ends. I myself thought nothing of the jour-
ney, which I have difficulty in screwing myself up
to at all now, but which I often then undertook
five or six times a year.

In spite of its remoteness, there was plenty of
society in Kerry in pre-war days. All the houses,
large and small, were lived in, not closed and
shuttered as they are to-day, or mere bumt-out
walls standing as tragic monuments to Irish free-
dom. The Kenmares were living at Killamey
House, the enormous red-brick structure built by
the last Earl, which incidentally ruined him and

6i

02 THE WINDS OF TIME

which was accidentally burnt to the ground in
1912 — a tragedy for the Kenmares and for
Killamey, because, although the red brick did
not harmonize with the wonderful frame in which
it was set, it was a stately and impressive pile, the
charred and blackened remains of which disfigure
to-day the glorious scenery of Killamey’s lower
lake. For unfortunately, instead of pulling down
the bumt-out shell and rebuilding on a smaller
scale on the same site, the present Kenmares retired
to the stables, which had been the original house
of the famil y and which they did up and lived in
until a few years ago, when they put up the shutters
and went to live in London.

Nobody ever loved Kerry more or worked harder
for her benefit than Lady Kenmare, who, as Lady
Castlerosse, when she first came to live at Killarney
House, started schools and industries of every
description and who later raised thousands of
pounds for the Lady Dudley Nursing Scheme. As
gifted as she is charming, in her tireless efforts to
biing prosperity and happiness to the poor she
showed how imderstanding and sympathetic an
Englishwoman married to an Irishman can be in
the land of her adoption. Except for an occasional
visit of a few days, ELillamey now, alas ! knows her
no more and is in more ways than one the poorer
for her absence.

Muckross, the equally lovely home for genera-
tions of the Herbert family, had been bought at
that time by Mr. Bourn, a Californian millionaire,
for his only daughter, Maud, the wife of Arthur
Vincent. Newly married, young and rich, the
Vincents entertained royally and gardened im-
perially, transforming, in typically lavish American
fashion, the face of the land, sweeping away for^ts
in a night, clothing in a day the mountain sides

MUCKROSS

63

with colour, producing acres of grassy lawns with
the wave of a magician’s wand, until the gods,
jealous as always of successful enterprise in Ireland,
dealt ill-fated Muckross a shattering knock-out
blow — ^Maud Vincent dying tragically of pneu-
monia in New York. Her husband, finding it
impossible after her death to keep up the place
as they had done in the past, offered it, in 1932,
to the Nation. The Government accepted the gift
without having the slightest idea of what to do
with it. Some day, perhaps, the youth of Ireland,
wandering by the shores of the lake, roaming the
wooded mountain slopes, will realize the beauty of
its marvellous possession. Meanwhile, the house
stands silent and deserted ; the lovely gardens are,
however, kept up and have not as yet assumed the
detached, uimatural air peculiar to State-owned
shrubs and flowers which belong to everybody and
to nobody.

Lakeview, another charming place on the lower
lake, now being nm by his son as an hotel, was
in those days the home of Sir Morgan O’Connell,
a kinsman of the Liberator and himself a splendid
specimen of the best type of Kerry landlord : a fine
sportsman, genial and courteous, beloved by his
neighbours and his tenants, with an unfailing sense
of humour and a wonderful collection of Irish
stories. One of his own experiences which always
.amused me was of his first visit to a smart London
restaurant in the days when cold storage was in
its infancy. It was late spring, and a roast grouse
was brought him by a waiter. “ A sitting hen ! ”
he exclaimed in horror. “ Good God ! take her
away at once.”

Over the mountains from EdUamey, on Kenmare
Bay, the lovely fjord-like inlet of the sea which
stretches inland for thirty miles between two long

THE WINDS OF TIME

64

ranges of blue hills, the Colombs were living at
Dromquinna, the Hoods at Dromore Castle,
Colonel Warden at Derryquin, which he had
recently bought from the Blands, while to en-
trancing Garinish Island, where tree-ferns flourish
with the same luxuriance as in their native land,
came every summer Lord Dunraven, a great
sportsman whose interests and activities covered
an extraordinarily wide field, a great Irishman
who lived his life spaciously and completely, and
whose love for his country showed itself in practical
schemes carried out for her benefit.

On Dingle Bay, another beautiful inlet of the
sea, at CaUinafercy, were my brother and his wife
(he had married again in 1906, Meriel, daughter
of Sir George Hodson), and at Kilcoleman Abbey
were my sister Mary and her husband Sir William
Godfrey. The Robert Fitzgeralds were living at
BaUyard, the Blennerhassetts at Ballyseedy, the
Crosbies at Ballyheigue Castle ; while at the
Barracks in Tralee, the depot of the 4th Battalion
of the Munsters, the Kerry militia held every
summer their training to the accompaniment of
dances, picnics and gymkhanas. A crowded life
for those who hked it and a new one for people
who, before the advent of motors, had lived remote
and secluded though in the same county, separated
from each other by mountain ranges, seldom
meeting, almost unknown to one another.

Places as well as people became suddenly ac-
cessible, even the Skelligs, those shadowy rocks
rising out of the Atlantic on the distant horizon,
which I had always longed to visit, being brought
within easy reach by motor-boat. From Valentia
Island we steered one day our course through the
narrow channel between the black rocks and the
green clifife of the Kerry shore out towards the

THE SKELUGS

65

West, where two distant peaks rose dimly out of
the ocean’s vast expanse. Gradually their outline
grew sharper and more forbidding, and the sea,
which during our three-hour voyage had been as
peaceful as the siuface of a river, began to heave
and churn. Soon, the Small Skellig stood above
our little boat, sharp and sinister, with stupendous
cliffs, its jagged heights of reddish marble a
seething multitude of circling birds, huge waves
dashing with horrid ominousness against the cruel
and defiant rocks, rising like a vast buttress from
the sea, protecting the gannet’s breeding sanctuary
from man’s intrusion. Beyond, on the right, th,e
Greater Skellig, high and green, raised its sea-pink
covered slopes. Ever more impressive it grew,
the nearer we approached beneath the overhanging
heights, frowning down upon the cockleshell in
which, oblivious of our nothingness, we steered
towards its savagely inhospitable shore. Even on
this perfect, windless St. Martin’s sununer day the
landing seemed formidable enough. Later on,
when great gales come sweeping up the Adantic,
when whirlwinds rage and the waters leap and
beat tumultuously agaiimt the eternally immovable
rock, it is so impracticable that, the previous winter,
the keepers of the' lighthouse — the only inhabitants
of this lonely outpost — ^had remained for 107 days
without communication firom the outer world.

Under the dark and overhanging rock beneath
which we eventually moored, a winding road,
following the outline of the projecting clifii leads
round the sides of a fearful chasm, in which the
waves break with a deep, thundering boom, to the
lower lighthouse. On the right a flight of steps,
690 in number, broken in places, exqmsitely lined
and cushioned in banks of greenest thrift, ascends
the dizzy height, on which has stood throughout

W.T. F

THE WINDS OF TIME

66

the centuries the strangely interesting monastic
settlement dedicated to St. Michael, of the history
of which so little is known to-day.

In his History of Ireland Keating alludes to it as
“ a kind of rock situated a few leagues in the sea
and since St. Patrick’s time much frequented by
way of piety and devotion ” — a statement for
which he quotes, however, no more authority
than Dr. Smith, in his History of Kerry, gives for his :
that the monastery was founded by St. Finan the
Leper, whose cell on Lough Corrane on the main-
land it greatly resembles. The earliest authentic
record of the monastic settlement would seem,
then, to occur in a.d. 838, when we read in The
Wars of the Dams that “ Scelig Michil was also
plundered by them and they took EitgaU with them
into captivity and it was by miracles he escaped,
and he died of hunger and thirst with them.”
This allusion, with two other dates, a.d. 950 and
A.D. 1044, referred to in the Annals of the Four
Masters as being the years of the death of Blathmhac
of Scelig and of Aedh of Scelig Michil, together
widi a description by Giraldus Cambrensis of “ an
island in the Southern part of Mimster with a
church dedicated to St. Michael, famed for its
orthodox sanctity from very ancient times,” appear
to contain all the available authentic information
of the island.

From the eastern end of a flat rock known as
“ Christ’s Saddle ” spring steps leading to the
Monastery, which stands 650 feet over sea-level,
fortified by retaining walls, some 5 feet wide in
parts, and encloang seven beehive cells, two of
which were used as oratories. The more modem
Church of St. Michael, in the structure of which
mortar has been used, was in a state of dilapidation,
whereas the original cells, being built of dby stone

ST. MICHAEL

67

and of “ beehive ” design, remained, after a lapse
of 900 yeaK, in a very good state of preservation.

Outside the Monastery stands a solitary cell
which was in all probability a penitent one, and
immediately beyond are the recreation grounds,
some 150 yards square in extent. The Monastery
itself encloses an area of three-fourths of an Irish
acre. In continuation of the main steps leading
from the road up to it are other steps leading to
the south-east side of the rock, and to a landing
recently renovated and used at the present day.
Although time has much defaced the regularity
of these steps, there yet remains sufficient evidence
to support the theory of this being the landing
originally used by the monks. Leading from the
cells to this landing is the “ Way of the Cross,”
the cross itself being embedded in soil but its
base just visible, with five stones, arranged hori-
zontally, overhanging a larger stone, representing
the five wounds received by our Lord. Along this
Way of the Cross, from Christ’s Saddle or the
Garden of Passion, a little green valley shelter-
ing between two precipitous and rocky peaks,
the tourist of to-day, with the pilgrim of old, climbs
up the almost perpendicular steps to the “ Stone
of Pain,” commemorating the moment when
Christ, bowing under the weight of the cross, sank
to the ground. From this point, at the edge of
a precipice, hundreds of feet above the sea, the
highest peak of the island runs up into the sky like
some vast spire, girt with buttresses and pinnacles,
with fantastically shaped rocks projecting like
gargoyles from the face of the cliff, one of which,
roughly hewn into the shape of a cross and named
“ The Rock of Woman’s Wailing,” celebrates the
scene in the walk to Calvary when Christ turns
and says : “ Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not

THE WINDS OF TIME

68

for me, but weep for yourselves and for your
children.”

Holes and stones cut in the rock lead up the
perilous heights to other stations, some of which
can only be safely reached on hands and knees —
piety and adventure ever luring the pilgrim on to
yet more hazardous enterprise. On and still on
we see them climb, each upward step bringing the
soul a holier message of reverence and awe, until
at last is reached the little passage leading from
the garden of the monks to the plateau, on which
are situated the Church of St. Michael, the oratories
and the beehive cells, those curiously shaped
dwellings of the monks of old, who sought and
found in these hermit retreats the spiritual strength
to fight and conquer the powers of evil and dark-
ness. Of these ruins it has been truly said that
“ so sad and solemn is the scene that none should
approach it but the pilgrim and the penitent.”
And though we live in a world to-day of few
pilgrimages and of even less repentance, trivial
indeed must be the mind which could view this
holy spot without a feeling of reverence and
solemnity. In their desolate beauty, in their
primitive austerity, these buildings, set like some
rough and xmcut precious stone in a jewelled
radiance of surrounding sea and sky, seemed
essentially a place of prayer. Unconsciously the
feeling stole over one of being sofdy drawn into
that state of contemplation in which the monks of
old found refuge from a life of sin and strife. To
remain, one felt, would mean being shaped like
the surrormding stones into a calm and eternal
holiness — to return to that world which, through
the little window of the oratory, grew ever more
remote, became increasingly impossible. And so
amid the ruins we sat and sat, and gazed beyond

NO PLACE OF SORROW 69

the sea-pink covered slope into the great immensityj
wrapped in that silence, beauty and wonder
described in the picturesque language alike of the
Gael and the Arab as the “ Three Veils of God.”
The abbot’s grave lay at oin: feet. Beyond, a
primitive and almost shapeless cross stood out
between the crumbling oratory and a beehive cell,
its low and simple doorway leading into a circular
chamber, the darkness broken by a tiny window,
above which the form of a cross could just be seen.
On the height above, more cells ; on the right, the
cashel or enclosing wall in still perfect repair, rising
sheer out of the edge of the precipice, 700 feet
above the sea. A place of the dead if you will, yet
not a place of sorrow ; for the Skelligs are of
Ireland, and in Ireland the dead are ever more
alive than the living. The body of the abbot may
once, indeed, have lain beneath the mossy ground,
but his spirit was hovering on that September after-
noon over the ruined place of prayer. The gentle
monks were murmuring their orisons, chanting
their daily song of praise, each in his hermit cell ;
while the great white birds, skimming the surface
of the opalescent sea below, were surely the same
as those which flapped their wings and shrilly
screamed when, over eleven hundred years ago,
the murderous Danes, descending on the rock,
carried away the hapless EitgaU into a miserable
captivity. Then, as now, in boundless silence
and in boundless space, die sea lay shimmering
in all the sheen and radiance of the opal, while
away in the distance stretched the - soft, poetic
moxmtains of Kerry — that mysteriously appealing
land which takes die stranger to her breast and
tears the heart out of those who love her best.
Time has brought but litde change. Between
those simple, holy monks and their successors, the

THE WINDS OF TIME

70

lighthouse-keepers of our own day, keeping their
lonely vigil on the “ last of God’s fortresses in the
Western sea,” some bond of union may still be
found. The beacon warning the sailor of danger
to his craft shines not less brilliantly to-day than
that spiritual beacon which, in the early days of
Christianity, shone forth like a star from those
remotest shores of Ireland and sent missionaries
all the world over, to point the way of salvation
to those saUing on the perilous sea of sin and
temptation. Philosophies have come and gone.
Religions have had their ebb and flow. The stars
still move, however, on their imchanging course.
God is in his Heaven still, and although we may
no longer agree with the poet that all is therefore
well with the world, we find ourselves to-day, in
spite of our vaunted progress and achievement,
with more knowledge perhaps, certainly with less
faith, still helpless in the face of circumstance,
wondering and

Watching as a patient, sleepless eremite

The moving waters at their priest-like task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.

CHAPTER VIII

EGYPT — ^THE BUILDING OF THE ARD-NA-SIDHE — SOME
KERRY FAIRIES

I N 1912 Home’s grandmother died at the age of
ninety. She was a remarkable old lady, who,
until she was eighty-six, had never had an illness
in her life. Her health and longevity were doubt-
less due to the regularity of the life she led and
the early hours she kept. Married at the age of
twenty, she separated from her husband, Sir Home,
two years later. Although she was extremely good-
looking, she never had another love aSair and never
evinced the slightest desire to marry again — the one
experience, she always maintained, having been
quite enough. Returning to her mother, Mrs.
Barnewall, she devoted herself entirely to the up-
bringing of her only son, who unfortimately proved
even more impossible than her husband, repaying
her devotion with ingratitude and abuse.

On her mother’s death she set up house with her
brother, Captain Charles Barnewall, in Granville
Place, Portman Square ; and in 1875, when Sir
Seton separated from his wife (who was the only
daughter of Montagu Scott, M.P. for Brighton), she
took charge of Home, who was their only son and
who lived with her until his marriage to me.
During the whole of that time she never lunched
or dined out or went to a party of any description.
She never went out except in a closed carriage, and
only left London in the summer, when she took

71

THE WINDS OF TIME

72

lodgings for five or six weeks at Folkestone or
Eastbourne. This monotonous existence seems to
have agreed with them both, as Uncle Charles, who
had left the Army at the age of twenty-seven
because he was supposed to be dying, eventually
lived to seventy-two, while Granny retained her
looks and her vitality to the end of her life.

The Bamewalls are an Irish family of which
Lord Trimlestown is the head, and on her mother’s
side she was Portuguese : a combination of races
which may have accounted for a vivacity and
sprighthness unusual in old ladies of the Victorian
era. When, at the age of eighty-six, she got her
first illness, she was terrified she might die. The
doctor diagnosed it as stone, and a specialist. Sir
WilHam Bennett, was called in. He advised an
immediate operation. Granny shrieked and, cling-
ing to Home and me, implored us not to allow it.
In the circumstances there was nothing to be done
but to let her have her way. Sir William was
furious. “ She will die in agonies in twenty-four
hours,” he said, as he walked out of the room. No
sooner had he gone than Granny sat up and asked
for a mutton chop. Whether she got it or not, I
don’t remember, but I know that within a week I
was taking her out shopping, and that she never
had a recurrence of her illness, nor did she con-
tract any other until four years later, when she really
died more of old age than of any actual disease.

I often used to think, if we had been Christian
Scientists what a marvellous cure might have been
claimed ; and really we would have been justified
in attributing to faith a recovery which nobody
was ever able to account for.

*****

The following year we spent part of an unfor-
getable winter in Egypt, feeling, as often happens

THE EGYPTIAN MOON

73

with any slight increase of income, a great deal
more opulent than we really were ; living in
expensive hotels and camping, even more expen-
sively, in the desert, with an enormous retinue of
dragomen, camels and donkeys. Egypt will always
remain in my memory as a land of golden days
and radiant nights. Nobody who has not seen the
moon in the Valley of the Nile has ever seen the
real thing — the pale, wan planet that lights Europe
dimly and uncertainly throughout the night being
but a dim reflection of the African moon which
illuminates the sphinx and floods the desert with a
brilliance which has to be seen to be believed.
*****

We had moved the previous year from Oving-
ton Square to 2, Cheyne Walk, a tiny Queen
Anne house with a powdering closet and a cottage
in the garden at the back. In the following
summer we embarked on the building of Ard-na-
sidhe, a real house this time, built of stone and
mortar, with a real architect in the shape of Mr.
Morley Horder, chosen out of a number of com-
petitors chiefly for his romantic appearance, which
I felt somehow would be reflected in his designs
and work. I wanted an inconsequent house and
yet one that would give an impression of perman-
ence in a landscape which changed its appear-
ance as often as I changed my mind about the
plans. No architect, I am sure, ever had so
much to contend with, and none ever emerged
more amiably out of the ordeal, not even utter-
ing a protest when submitting a drawing which
I saw one day, to my horror, was numbered
“ 103.”

The new house was even more beautifully situated
than the wooden one, which, although only a few
hundred yards away, was not visible from it, being

THE WINDS OF TIME

74

completely hidden by an intervening wood ; which
was as well, as the hideousness and unsuitability
of the latter was afflicting me more every day.
Fortunately, being made of wood and iron, it was
removable, and, having been disposed of to a local
carpenter, it was later re-erected in Killorglin,
where, for some time, it served as a Sinn Fein
Club, being eventually burnt to the ground by the
Black and Tans.

Everything connected with the building of the
new house was, as far as possible, of Irish origin,
an exception having to be made with regard to the
slates, which came from Westmorland, the quarries
on Valentia Island being closed and no other grey
slates of good quality being available in Ireland.
The contractor was a native of Kullorglin and the
workmen were all local. The stone came from
Glenbeigh, the gravel from some derelict land on
the other side of the Lake. At least, the contractor
thought it was derelict until he received the follow-
ing delightful protest from its bed-ridden owner —
who, I need hardly say, received, in due course,
the compensation so forcibly claimed :

Mr. O Sullivan I mean to know, what claim had
you or who gave you permission to come in to my
land, myself and father have possessed those fifty
years, and many a poxmds rent paid for it. If I
had my health I would shue ye honestly for com-
pensation as I did Kenedy for the railway fee, he
took me twice to Killamey and did his best, I
being an old occuper with a strong claim an my
rent paid I got it in spite of him, its easy to wrong
me these six years in my bed. Not a man in Kerry
would alow you into his land and make a grave for
his cattle and leave it so.

Take notice ; if you dont seccure the pit out of

IRISH FAIRIES 75

danger in time if my cows is clifted into it you are
my mark

a stitch in time saves nine

from James

Caragh Lake.

At the back of the house was a fairy “ rath,”
one of those curious hills often found in Ireland,
with subterranean passages with stone-built walls
leading into a large central cave, the origin of
which is a mystery. Usually known as Danish
forts, it is more than likely that the ancient Irish
lived on top of these mounds in wood and wattle
huts, surroimded by palisades for keeping out
wolves, and that they used the cave for storing
their grain and other possessions in winter, or for
taking refuge in themselves when attacked by their
enemies. Whoever built them, or whatever use
they may have been put to in the past, these
“ raths ” are regarded to this day by the peasants
as the home of the Sidhcy “ the people of the hill,”
who, according to some authorities, are the spirits
of the Tuatha de danaan (the original mythical
inhabitants of Ireland), and accor^ng to others,
fallen angels who, cast out of Heaven for their sins,
yet not evil enough for Hell, are allowed to
occupy an intermediate space in Ireland, living in
subterranean palaces into which mortals have
occasionally been known to penetrate, in which
they have found wonderful treasures of gold and
silver and conversed with cats and greyhoimds,
which, according to tradition, possessed, like all
animals before the introduction of Christianity,
faculties of speech and reason.

In Kerry, the belief in fairies has lingered longer
than in most parts of Ireland. U:^ortunately,
however, education, with its inevitably blighting

THE WINDS OF TIME

76

effect on the imagination, is doing its best-— or
rather, its worst — to undermine it ; so that even
though “ pookhies ” still dance on mossy raths and
red-haired “ banshees ” shriek warnings of death,
the awe in which the dwellings of these strange and
supernatural beings were once held is so rapidly
dying out that I was able to supervise, without a
protest, the opening up of the “ fairy fort ” and
the cutting down of a “ fairy thorn ” by men whose
fathers and grandfathers would have flatly declined
to lay hands on either. My surprise, therefore, was
great when two of the labourers engaged in digging
the foundations of the house, and to whom I had
tentatively suggested exploring the fort, promptly
followed me up the hiU and began to dig round the
opening of one of the passages leading into the
cave. No sooner was the entrance clear than one
of them lay down flat on the ground and, crawling
on all fours, disappeared from sight into the bowels
of the earth. The other man exhibiting no con-
cern, I considered it advisable also to maintain an
attitude of indifference although fully conscious
that, a few years ago, such an act would certainly
have been attended with alarming consequences.
Soon after, however, the man’s heels having reap-
peared, and these being presently followed by his
head, I was able to inquire not only as to his dis-
coveries but as to the motive which had induced
him to undertake what must have been a singularly
unpleasant e3q)edition, judging from the condition
of his clothes and the spiders’ nests reposing in his
hair. Unfortunately, so far as his investigations
went, there was nothing startling to reveal, the
long narrow passage being one of five originally
leading into, the central cave, the roof of which,
however, had fallen in and blocked his progress.
As to his motive, much as I regret to record it, I

A FAIRY TREE

77

am obliged to admit it was wholly and entirely
mercenary. “ I thought,” he replied, as he gin-
gerly removed the woolly nests from his head,
“ there could be money inside,” voicing the tradi-
tion of buried treasure which prevails all over
Kerry, as well as the altogether modern supremacy
of the passion for gain over the power of super-
stition.

After this episode I felt sufficiently encouraged
to suggest the removal of a thom-tree which seri-
ously impeded the view from the house, but to
which I had long been resigned, as one resigns
oneself to Fate and all the immovable circumstances
of life. Again, however, there was no remon-
strance ; and as the tree fell with a crash on the
mossy bank, if any fear of horrible consequences
was felt by those present, it was felt by me alone,
the men who had done the unholy deed resuming
their pipes, shouldering their saws and hatchets,
and strolling back to their ordinary work. Per-
sonally, for years I never passed the spot where the
tree once stood without an almost imperceptible
shudder of apprehension ; for, after all, the thorn
is a fairy tree, and “ Anna Grace,” of Sir Samuel
Ferguson’s ballad, is not the only mortal who has
been spirited away from her companions by

the silent fairy crowd.

Like a river in the air gliding round.

Nor scream can raise nor prayer can any say.

But wild, wild the terror of the speechless three,

For they feel fair Anna Grace drawn silently away —
By whom they dare not look to see.

Where such a tragic fate overtook poor Anna
Grace and her three companions, who, after all,
had only been guilty of dancing beneath the fairy
thorn, one may perhaps be pardoned for feeling a
certain apprehensiveness when it came to cutting

THE WINDS OF TIME

78

one down. As a matter of fact, however, the
punishment for such a deed, if tmpleasant, does
not appear as severe as might be expected, judging
by another poem (by Allingham) in which we read
of fairies who

Have planted thom-trees
For pleasure here and there ;

Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Altogether, seeing the vindictive nature of fairies
and their uncompromising attitude towards the
transgressors of their laws, it is perhaps not to be
regretted that, though still inhabiting the earth, they
should be gradually losing something of their power.

At the same time, if the wholesome awe usually
connected with the supernatural element in life
appears to be dying out, on the principle of the
Kerry man who denied the power of the priest to
turn him, as threatened, into a rat, but who all
the same took the precaution of shutting up the
cat at night, a certain respect for the fairies still
prevails, which is perhaps as well. For if in the
past they have displayed an altogether uncharitable
tendency to take babies out of their cradles and to
substitute for them fairy changelings of uncertain
temper ; to lure newly married women away from
their husbands, leaving counterfeit corpses in their
places ; to administer blows to strong men which
result in paralysis and blindness ; to bewitch cows
so that their milk fails and to blight and destroy
whole crops of potatoes, it must be remembered
that they are also capable of rewarding virtue, as
in the case of Hanafin and his cows, one of the
many delightful fairy tales collected in Kerry by
the late Mr, Jeremiah Curtin.

hanafin’s cows

79

Hanafin, it appears, was a farmer living near
Dingle, owning a large herd of cows, which were
driven up every morning to be milked in front of
the house. It happened, however, that for several
days in succession the tub into which the milk was
poured by the girls was mysteriously overturned
and the milk spilled. Hanafin’s wife was naturally
exceedingly indignant, but in spite of every pre-
caution the milk continued to be upset. One
morning, however, as Hanafin was walking along
the road past a fairy fort, he heard a child crying
inside it and a woman’s voice say, “ Be quiet a
while, Hanafin’s cows are going home ; we’ll soon
have milk in plenty.” Now Hanafin, being a wise
man, said nothing, but went home and personally
supervised the miUdng, with the result that, on the
usual overturning of the tub, he stopped his wife
in the middle of her scolding by telling her it was
no fault of the girl, who on this occasion had been
pushed by one of the cows against the tub. ‘ ‘ Leave
it to me,” he said. “ I’ll try and manage this
business.”

The following morning, on hearing the child
crying again in the fort, he, “ like the brave man
that he was,” went inside. He saw no one, but he
said : “ A child is crying for milk. A cow of mine
will calve to-morrow. I’ll let no one milk that
cow ; you can do what you like with her milk.”

The tub was never turned over again, and for
two years Hanafin prospered in every way, taking
good care of the cow and never letting a girl or
woman milk her. Unfortunately, however, Han-
afin, being a Kerry man, was also soft-hearted,
and, some of his neighboxurs getting into trouble, he
went secxirity for them, with the result that the
creditors came down on him and the baUiff arrived
one day in order to drive off his cattle. Hanafin

THE WINBS OF TIME

8o

thereupon repaired to the fairy fort and said :
“ I’m going to lose all my cattle, but I’ll try to
keep the cow I gave you, so that the child may
have the milk.”

Three bailiffs came, and went down to the pas-
tures across the field, but when they drove the
cows up as far as the fairy fort each bailiff “ was
caught and thrown hither and over by people he
couldn’t see ; one minute he was on one side of the
ditch and the next minute on the other side. They
were so roughly handled and bruised that they
were hardly alive, and they not seeing who or
what was doing it. The cattle, raising their tails,
bawled and ran offto the pastures.” The following
morning ten policemen and bai l i f fs went to take
Hanafin’s cattle, with, however, identically the
same result, “ so that they barely left the place
alive.” Never again did police or bailiff meddle
with Hanafin’s cows, and, above aU, the creditors
never collected the money.

Occasionally the fairies, being Irish, display a
certain sense of humour, as in the case of John
Connors, a farmer who lived near Killarney, whose
delight was so great at being presented by his wife,
after seven daughters, with a son, that he broke
his spade in the ditch for joy and started off to the
next parish to find sponsors for the christening, not
considering anybody in his own parish worthy of
the honour. He had, however, not gone very far
before meeting a stranger riding on a white horse,
attired in red knee-breeches, a swallow-tailed coat
and a tall hat, who asked him where he was going.

“ I’m going,” said Goimor, “ to Beaufort to find
sponsors for my young son.”

“ Oh, you foolish man,” said the stranger, “ you
left the road a mile behind you. Turn back and
take the left hand.”

THE LIVE CORPSE

8l

John Connors, having done as directed, had not
ridden very far along the new road when he met
the same gentleman again, who once more directed
him on his way. As a matter of fact, all that night
he kept meeting the stranger, who finally invited
him to his house and insisted on his staying with
him till the morning. Once Connors was asleep,
the stranger took his clothes, formed a corpse in
exact imitation of the owner, put the clothes on it,
tied the body to the horse and, leading it outside,
turned its head towards home, keeping Connors
himself in bed for three weeks.

The horse in due course found its way home, and
the people, seeing the corpse on its back, took it for
Connors, to whom they gave a great wake that
night, “ everybody mourning and lamenting for
him, for wasn’t he a good man and the father of a
large family ? ”

Three weeks later Connors was awakened by his
host and told to go home.

“ But where are my clothes ? ” asked Connors,
sitting up in bed and looking roimd him.

“ I know nothing of your clothes,” said the
stranger, “ and the sooner you get out of this the
better.”

“ But God help me,” said Connors, “ how am I
to go home without my clothes ? If I had a shirt
itself it wouldn’t be so bad, but to go without a
rag at all on me ! ”

“ Don’t be talking,” said the man ; “ take a sheet
and be off with you. I have no time to lose on the
like of you.”

John, being afraid of the man, took the sheet and
went out. Now it is the custom in Ireland, when
^ybody dies, to sprinkle holy water on the clothes
of the deceased and to give them for God’s sake
to the poor, thereby ensuring their having them

THE WINDS OF TIME

82

for their own use in another world. So that when
John Connors appeared in his native town in a
sheet, the people who saw him, on recovering from
the shock, rushed to his wife and accused her of
not having given his clothes to the poor, since his
ghost was roaming aroimd in nakedness.

“ Indeed,” said his wife, “ I did give them
away ; it must be that the man I gave them to
didn’t wear them to Mass, and that is why my
poor husband is naked in the other world ” ;
whereupon she went for the neighbour and pro-
ceeded to revile him.

“ Bad luck to you, you heathen,” said she. “ I
did not think you the man to leave my poor John
naked in the other world. You neither went to
Mass in the clothes I gave you, nor sprinkled holy
water on them.”

The neighbour having, however, proved to her
satisfaction that he had performed all the necessary
rites over the garments, the widow returned home,
only to receive herself that same night a visitation
from the ghost. Overcome with terror she hid
hei^lf and her children under the bedclothes,
leaving John tapping at the window while she
offered up prayers for the repose of his soul.

Whenever Connors appeared it was always with
the same result ; even the doctor, having seen him
through the window, refusing to open the door to
him. At last he betook himself to the priest,
whose housekeeper, having opened the door, fell in
a fit on the stairs on seeing the apparition. The
priest, hearing the noise, ran out, and, finding him-
self face to face with the ghost of the corpse over
whom he had said Mass, refused to believe him
alive.

“ If you are,” said he, “ where are your clothes ? ”

“I don’t know where they are,.” said Coimors,

ESSENTIAL SUPERNATURAUSM 83

“ or how they went from me, but I haven’t them,
sure enough.”

“ Go into the kitchen,” said the priest. “ I’ll
bring you clothes, and then you must tell me what
happened to you.”

Connors having related his adventures, “ ’Tis
Daniel O’Donohue, the fairy chief— King of Loch-
lein (Killarney) — that played the trick on you,”
said the priest. “ Why didn’t you get sponsors at
home in this parish for your son as you did for your
daughters?” And having duly admonished him
for his pride and his wilfulness the priest accom-
panied liim to his wife’s house, where, in answer to
their knocking, they were only met with renewed
prayers for the repose of Connors’ soul. After some
time, however, the priest prevailed on her to open
the door and finally succeeded in convincing her
that her husband was really there in the flesh.

Once restored to the bosom of his family, it is not
surprising to hear that after all his adventures in
the sheet, “ no matter how large his family was in
after years, John Connors never went from home
again to find sponsors.”

Taking it all roxmd it would be a drab world if
there were no fairies in it, no supernatural region
where nothing is too preposterous to occur ; for, in
spite of the fact that we live in a proverbially
materialistic age, for each of us individually this
land takes shape, according to our own imaginings :
but whether we locate it in this world or in the
next, and whether we call its inhabitants gods or
fairies, matters little. The essential fact remains
that earth-bound humanity, seeking to escape from
the sordid cares and anxieties of everyday Itfe, still
dreams in one form or another of a world of fan-
tastic happenings, which, in some unaccountable
manner, exercise a mysterious influence on one’s

84 the winds of time

life and actions. Certainly one cannot imagine
Kerry without this other world, beautiful, mys-
terious Kerry, where, if anywhere, the fairies

Live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide foam :

Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake
With frogs for their watch-dogs
All night awake.

CHAPTER IX

POLITICS— A NATIONALIST MEETING — ^THE IRISH CLUB —
VICEREGAL LODGE — ^LLOYD GEORGE — ^THE NATIONAL
VOLinTTEERS

T O be suspected of Nationalist sympathies in
Kerry in 1913 was almost as bad in the
eyes of one’s Unionist neighbours as being suspected
of murder. Ever since I had thought about the
matter at all I had been a Home Ruler, but I
have never been able to take politics with the same
seriousness with which my “ ^e-hard ” neighbours
took their Unionism, and I have always thought
it would be a dull world if we all held the same
opinions. But when I once said so to a friend
with whom I had been having a fierce political
argument, she replied heatedly : “ No, I don’t.
I wemt everybody to think as I do because I know
I’m light.”

Being totally lacking in a similar conviction of
my own infallibility on any subject, I discreetly
kept my opinions as much as possible to myself,
except for one memorable lapse when I expressed
them at length in the Daily Mail in a letter un-
fortunately published on the one day of all others
when the whole Goimty were returning, in a flushed
and exalted condition, from Belfast, where they
had been signing Sir Edward Carson’s Covenant
with pens dipped, it was said, in blood from their
own veins — proving once more how impossible it
is to be serious in Ireland without being ridiculous.

85

THE, WINDS OF TIME

86

Believing, as they undoubtedly did, that the pass-
ing of the Home Rule Act would mean the end
of Ireland — or at any rate the end of their own
class, which was all of Ireland that mattered to
them — their feelings were naturally outraged by
my letter, which they all read in the train on their
homeward journey. That I should hold opinions
so utterly at variance with theirs seemed to them
a betrayal of my class. Their indignation was in-
tense ; and when, soon after, I attended John
Redmond’s great Nationalist meeting in Kerry,
got up as a counterblast to the Carson show in the
North, my ostracism was complete. Quite useless
were my protestations that nothing but curiosity
had been my motive in attending that momentous
gathering. In vain I sought for some explanation
of the fact that to attend a political meeting in
Ireland is to be guilty of a crime against society.
In England I had listened on various occasions in
Hyde Park, and even within the hallowed precincts
of the Albert Hall, to fanatical outbursts of Social-
ists, Suifragettes, and Anarchists, without in any
way polluting the crystal pmity of my principles.
The sole result of my most reasoned argument was
the reiteration of the fact that in Ireland people
brought up in Unionist circles did not attend
Nationalist meetings. Why they should not do so,
nobody went to the length of explaining. Briefly
and finally, “ it was not done.”

The fact remains, however, that I did it, and I
shall always be glad that I did, even though it
ended in my falling through the platform in the
middle of Redmond’s speech and narrowly
escaped ending my career in a manner which
would certainly have commended itself to my
neighbours as thoroughly justifiable and deserved.

Apart from this tragic catastrophe the expedition

A NATIONALIST MEETING 87

was a great success. All along the beautiful coast
road skirting Dingle Bay we followed in the wake
of the Nationalist leader, past groups of cheering
men, women and children waving green flags, to
Cahirciveen, where we alighted at the hotel. A
gargantuan meal was in progress. Everywhere
were joints — even on the stairs — and everywhere
people eating and drinking ; boiled mutton, roast
duck and ham, all on the same plate, appearing
to be the favourite menu.

In a private room, the Leader, his wife, his trusty
henchman, Pat O’Brien, and various followers
were tossing off champagne and claret. While we
were being introduced to him, Mr. Morley Horder
penetrated, with typically British indiscretion, to
the kitchen. What he saw he never related, but
he returned pale and silent and, refusing all
nourishment, sat, remote and uncompromising,
among the potato skins and the gravy dishes on
the stairs.

In the street outside, cavalcades of the “ Ancient
Order of Hibernians,” with green sashes slung
across their shoulders, galloped wildly up and
down, while Christian Brother bands played
patriotic, if slightly discordant, melodies. Banners
inscribed “We will have Home Rule” stretched
across the road. Over the gaily decorated plat-
form outside the Carnegie Hall, one proclaiming
“ Iveragh solid for Home Rule ” waved in the
breeze. It was, as a matter of fact, the only thing
in our immediate vicinity that was at all soUd.
The platform, tightly wedged with humanity, as
a way was forcibly made on it for us by our local
M.P., swayed ominously. Throughout the open-
ing speeches it quivered sympathetically with the
patriotic emotion displayed by the speakers. No
sooner had Mr. Redmond risen to his feet, at the

THE WINDS OF TIME

88

front, than the occupants of the back rows began
to press forward, with the result that, the planks
beneath us giving way, we found ourselves crashing
through space on to what appeared to be the floor
of Hell, a shrieking, cursing, trampling mass, who
eventually found themselves struggling on the
ground among the empty porter barrels on which
the platform had originally been raised.

Were we dead or were we not? A moment of
painful uncertainty, after which, disentangling our
mixed-up limbs from those of our neighbours, we
scrambled to our feet, finding, to our surprise, that
few of us were greatly damaged, but amazed to
hear the meeting proceeding as if no cataclysm had
occmred. This, we subsequently discovered, was
due not so much to the heardessness of the speaker
as to the sang-froid displayed by the chairman,
who, from a position of safety in front, in order to
avoid a panic, had informed the public, as we
disappeared from view, that “ a few people had
temporarily left the back of the platform.”

From a window through which we were eventu-
ally hauled into the basement, we mounted to an
upper storey and on to a flat roof, from which
we listened to Mr. Redmond’s speech. Eloquent,
fervent and sincere, it left one with a feeling of
hopefulness that at last the ship was really at the
harbour’s mouth and Ireland at the beginning of
a new era ; even if, at the back of one’s mind,
one found oneself wondering whether, in his con-
temptuous allusions to Ulster and Sir Edward
Carson, the Nationalist Leader was not Tnaking
the fatal mistake of underestimating the strength
of the enemy.

“ Implacable, irreconcilable, based on neither
argument nor reason, its root the old spirit of
ascendancy— a brutal and arrogant determination to

TOO INTELLIGENT

89

override the will of Parliament and of the country
at any risk,” was the Ulster opposition a thing to
be lightly dismissed as “ humbug,” the tactics of
the Carsonites to be described as the “ methods of
desperate, broken and resourceless men ” ?

That Mr. Redmond honestly believed it to be
so was obvious.

“ The man is mad,” he remarked with an air
of finality of Sir Edward Carson, as we subsequently
walked across the square, when the meeting was
over, to the hotel for further refreshment.

I remember asking him how he liked his audience.

“ They are too intelligent,” he replied, “ and
take up points too quickly.”

The interruptions had certainly been trying and
the Leader was obviously annoyed, which perhaps
was not surprising seeing that Mrs. Redmond’s
foot had been badly hurt in the collapse of the
platform and that somebody’s blood had been shed
profusely over her coat.

As we motored home in the gathering dusk,
Mr. Morley Horder nursing a damaged shin-bone,
his English Liberal, Home Rule convictions tem-
porarily abandoned, kept gasping, “ What a
country ! ” assuring us that people who were
incapable of constructing even a platform could
not possibly be trusted to construct a political
constitution.

Perhaps he was right. I don’t know. Since
then much water has flowed beneath the bridges
of Ireland. Mr. Redmond died and the Nationalist
party went down. The Convention, which proved
that, outside Ulster, Unionists and Nationalists
were not irreconcilable, collapsed when the new
Home Rule Bill promised by Lloyd George failed
to materialize. In the elections held soon after, or
rather, not held, since there was practically no

THE WINDS OF TIME

90

contest, Ireland threw herself unresistingly into the
arms of Sinn Fein, which has since become openly
Republican.

What the eventual result of it all would be,
who could say? Whether Ireland would prove
capable of governing herself or not, England at
any rate had proved her incapacity to do it for
her.

I suppose it was by constant insistence on this
fairly obvious fact that I came to be labelled in
Unionist circles as a Sinn Feiner, although con-
scious of no more startling political conviction than
this. Not being of the stuff of which martyrs
are made, it is not, however, one for which I was
prepared to die. And in Ireland, if you have
political principles, you are unfortimately always
expected to die for Aem. To have no prejudices,
to be possessed of an open mind, means that, sooner
or later, you will be suspected by aU parties in
the country of dishonesty ; of “ hunting vdth the
hounds and running with the hare.”

Every movement in Ireland, from the starting of
a creamery to the studying of Celtic literature,
begins in Ae same way — on strictly non-political,
non-sectarian lines, and ends in bloodshed and fire ;
while to identify yourself with neither side is to
live and die in the shadow of suspicion.

Feeling I might as weU be hanged for a sheep as
for a lamb, I plunged with enthusiasm into Irish
politics, proclaiming my Nationalist sympathies
on every possible occasion — ^usually with disastrous
results, the most humiliating of which was the
remark of a hairdresser who, in the course of a
shampoo, reproachfully told me he had never yet
met a lady who was a Home Ruler.

I made a great many enendes and lost a number
of Mends, incidentally consoling myself with the

THE ABERDEENS gi

reflection that friendships so easily lost were in
any case not worth preserving.

It takes so much energy to maintain an unpopular
point of view that I found myself gradually drifting
out of Unionist circles into Home Rule ones. I
joined various leagues and societies for the purpose
of supporting Irish freedom, and dined frequently
at the Irish Club, later a highly respectable insti-
tution, with peers, and even princes, as guests of
the evening, but then somewhat of a pot-house in
the Charing Cross Road. My memory of these
dinners is chiefly of enormous women attired in
bright green satin and of wild young men in day
clothes who invariably opened their after-dinner
speeches with the remark : “ I am aware that this
Club is strictly non-sectarian and non-political,
but — my Father was a member of the Land League
(applause), my Grandfather was a Fenian (still

louder applause), I myself am a ” (deafening

applause which completely drowned the nature of
his own political convictions, as well as the protests
of the popular secretary, Sam Geddes).

At those entertainments I met various Nationalist
members with whom I used to dine in the House
of Commons or have tea on the Terrace ; while
one of our own Kerry members, Tom O’Donnell,
undertook to teach me Irish — an effort which did
not, I fear, meet with much success, but which led
to a lifelong friendship with a man of exceptional
character and charm, whose passionate belief in
Ireland has survived the winds of time and the
storms of disillusionment.

In November 1913 I finally “ put the lid ” on
my social collapse by staying with the Aberdeens
at the Viceregal Lodge. Unionist Ireland never
recognizing a Liberal Viceroy, the Aberdeens were
not only ostracized but were the subject of endless

QQ the winds of time

petty 3 iid ridiculous stories which did not contuin
even the proverbial grain of ttuth. The Lodge
was a delightful house to stay in, and the fact^ of
their not having to entertain hosts of people wiA
whom they could never have had anything in
common gave the Aberdeens all the more time to
devote to the causes they both had at heart, hteals
were erratic. Dinner was seldom before 1 1 p.m.
and often very much later. At the end of a strenu-
ous day devoted to expeditions to distant sanatoria
and milk depots, there were generally meetings to
be attended in the evenings lasting until one’s usual
bedtime, but the most though^l of A.D.C.S
invariably sent, on these occasions, soup and
poached eggs to one’s bedroom to sustain one
between tea and the midnight meal.

Lady Aberdeen herself is capable not only of
p xis tin g without food but widiout sleep, being
frequently found by a housemaid, at sunrise, seated
in her evening dress at her writing-table.

No Vicereine ever worked harder or spent more
time and money on the welfare of Ireland, but,
because she was a Home Ruler, the Unionist
element, instead of lending a helping hand to a
crusade they should have long ago started them-
selves, merely sniffed and repeated idiotic tales of
Viceregal economies, which, even if they were
true, in no way affected Lady Aberdeen’s generosity
to the poor. On one occasion when she came to
Kerry I took her to one of the most poverty-stricken
re^ons known as “ Congested Districts,” where
human beings, pigs and chickens lived in distressing
proximity. In every cottage we entered she left
an amazingly generous contribution, for which I
subsequently foimd myself sharing a certain amount
oS whdOy unmerited credit, a mythical personage
entitled “ Lady Abergordon ” existpg to this day

MR. LLOYD GEORGE 93

in the recollection of the astonished inhabitants of
Cromane.

Although it is many years since they left Ireland,
the cause for which both Lord and Lady Aberdeen
worked so unremittingly still goes on, and the most
appropriate monument to their memory is to be
found in the decrease of tuberculosis and the
amazingly improved health of the country in
general.

As a member of the crowd, I watched one day
in a Dublin street the arrival of their successors.
Lord Wimborne, “ a fine figure of a man on horse-
back,” commanded universal admiration. Lady
Wimborne, in a bright green cloak, very well got
up, was seated with her children in an open carriage.

“ Holy Mary ! ” said a woman in front of me.
“ Did ye ever see the like of her l—poor Lady
Aberdeen at any rate looked respectable.”

^ ^ ^ ^

In the spring of 1914 we went to stay with Mr.
Avray Tipping in his lovely new house at Chepstow,
with marvellous gardens of many delights. Lloyd
George and a large party of Welsh members, their
wives and families, came over on Sunday to limch.
I sat next him and we talked of Ulster, which of
course at that time was the one subject of con-
versation. His irresponsibility rather horrified me.
He enthused over the National Volunteers and
said America would supply them with money and
arms. I said, “ What chance have they in a Civil
War ? You know what Irish rebellions have
always been — they invariably rise on the wrong
day, or lose their leader, or else there is a storm —
they have no organization.”

“ Ah,” he said, “ they never had a chance
before, never till now have they had a sympathetic

THE WINDS OF TIME

Government.” He was obviously all for civil
war.

I suggested one did not want to start Home Rule
under such circumstances. “ Oh, I don’t know,”
he said, “ it’s not such a bad way.”

He said he told Redmond two years before what
he was up against in Ulster, and neither he nor
Devlin would believe him ; both insisted that it
was all bluff, confirming what Redmond and Devlin
had both said to me, proving they did not take
Ulster seriously.

I told him “ Garsonite ” was the most oppro-
brious epithet you could bestow on your enemy
in the South, and he told me of a Frenchman who,
soon after the Franco-German War, had a man
up for libel.

“ What did he say ? ” asked the judge.

“ He called me names.”

“ Did he call you cochon ? ”

“ Much worse — ^he called me Bismarck ! ”

We discussed what would happen if Ulster
mobilized and he replied : “ The Navy would
blockade it,” adding that the Navy was “ all
right,” which was more than the Array was at
that time — although my cousin Hubert Gough,
who was responsible for the “ Gurragh Incident,”
subsequently told me that his threat to resign rather
than take up arms against the North was com-
pletely misinterpreted, as it would have applied
equally to the South, his objection to shooting his
own countrymen not being limited to one particular
party.

Although I was enormously interested in meeting
Uoyd George, for whom I had, at the time, con-
siderable admiration, I think on the whole, in
sj^te of hk undeniable charm, I was somewhat
didSusioned, zmd came to the conclusion that he

DANGER ! 95

was more dangerous than great ; more witty
than wise, at any rate on the subject of Ireland.

That the North and the South would have come
to blows in 1914 if it had not been for the Great
War seems more than likely. They are bound to
do it some day, and it is one of those extremely
unpleasant happenings which one would rather
have behind one than in front. The National
Volunteers were certainly out for blood that
summer, although whose was not at first apparent.
Ireland was in an ugly mood and ready, like an
angry tigress, to spring on anyone who crossed
her path. England, however, persisted in treating
her as a cranky cat, which could be propitiated
with a saucer of cream. “ Pretty Puss,” they
called, inviting her in coaxing accents to a Con-
ference. John Redmond lapped the cream.

“ I hear you have Buckingham Palace in your
pocket,” George Mair said to him one day during
the proceedings.

“ Well,” replied Mr. Redmond, “ I admit I
quite enjoy what Disraeli called ‘ simpering in
gilded saloons.’ ”

Across the water, however, the tigress was snarl-
ing. Arms were pouring in openly from some
mysterious source. At a meeting of theW.N.H.A.*
held in the Carnegie Hall in Killorglin, with the
Protestant Dean in the chair and the entire county
on the Committee, stocks of rifles piled against the
walls confronted the astotmded members. I am no
authority on guns of any kind, hut even I thought
they looked rather odd and was not surprised to
learn later that they were obsolete Enfields, dis-
carded some years (or centuries) ago by the Italian
Army, which would certainly have killed anyone
attempting to fire them. The Volunteers, how-
^ Women’s National Health Association.

THE WINDS OF TIME

96

ever, were not to be defeated by such trifles.
Having once started drilling, nothing could stop
them. They or their descendants (nearly twenty
years later) are still at it, without its having
had the slightest effect on their bearing or their
gait, which remains of a lamentably unsoldierlike
description. And as they never actually went
into battle, and are never likely to, it is difficult
to understand so much enthusiasm for a form of
exercise which must work havoc with their boots
and has, as a rule, to be practised in secret and
leads nowhere.

CHAPTER X

THE WAR — TRIP TO FRANCE

I N the desperate clash of armies in the fields and
marshes of France and Belgium, Ireland’s
claim for freedom seemed like the flicker of a
candle beside a blazing furnace. In the general
chaos and confusion which overwhelmed the world,
the candle apparently went out. Over 16,000
National Volunteers actually joined the British
Army ; others, discouraged by the treatment
meted out to Ireland by the War Ofiice, broke
with Redmond. The majority faded away for a
time, eventually finding an outiet for their military
aspirations in the 1916 Easter Week rebellion.
Meanwhile, outwardly at any rate, Ireland’s sym-
pathy was with England in the war.

I wanted to go to London, where I thought I
might get work in a hospital or canteen, but I had
to stay and supervise operations at Ard-na-sidhe,
now nearing completion. It had taken just over
a year to build, and if, like all ideals, the reality
fell somewhat short of the perfection imagined, few
things in life have ever given me quite the same
pleasure as the building of the House of my Dreams.

Long and low and gabled, with leaded casement
windows set in grey stone midlions, unlike most
newly built houses it never looked new. Perhaps
it was the warm brown sandstone, perhaps it was
the lovely greeny-grey Westmorland slates, or it
may have been the Kerry climate which gave it,

w.r. 97 H

g3 THE WINDS OF TIME

from the start, the appearance of having weathered
the rain and the winds of centuries. Seen from
the Lake against the background of green wood
and brown mountain, it gave the impression—
probably from its proximity to the “ fairy fort ”
of having materialized in a moment of enchant-
ment rather than of having been fashioned by
human hands of earthly stone and mortar. Be-
longing to no particular age or style, it fitted
harmoniously into the landscape instead of hitting
it in the eye like the deplorable newly erected
“residences” disfiguring the northern shores of
the Lake, mercifully hidden from view by a thick
belt of fir-trees. Architecturally the entrance side
was a more successful feature of the house than
the front, which wandered a little too inconse-
quently and grew somewhat confused at the loggia
end, where a steeply pitched roof between the
dining-room and the servants’ wing slightly spoiled
the symmetrical effect of the whole.

A rounded cut stone arch over the heavy oak
entrance door was perhaps the most original
feature, and the one which aroused most criticism.
“ A Romanesque door in an Elizabethan house ! ”
exclaimed, one day, a horrified visitor who rather
fancied himself as an expert in architecture. I
explained that the house was not Elizabethan but
Irish and that, as there was no traditional domestic
architecture in Ireland, Mr. Morley Horder had
gone for iQq)iration to the ruined churches which
are the only survivals in Kerry of an ancient
Gadic civilization. The contractor, who had
bear listening with interest to the discussion on the
“ Romanesque ” style of the door, absorbed enough
of the convorsation to reply authoritatively to
subsequent inquiries on the part of later visitors
that ^e house was built in the Ruinesque style — ^a

CROSSING TO FRANCE

99

description which at any rate described the con-
dition of its owners when completed.

* * Hs :|e

Returning to London in the late autumn I
attended Red Gross lectures and, taking out a
V.A.D. certificate, searched vainly for a job. Just
as I was giving up hope. Lord Dunraven, with
whom I was playing bridge one day at his house
in Connaught Place, said if I liked to go to France
he would take me in his yacht to Boulogne, where
he was going to fetch wounded officers and where
he was sure Lady Dudley, who was a friend of
his, would take me on in her hospital. It was just
after the first battle of Ypres and London was full of
stories of the terrible conditions at Boulogne, where
the wounded were said to be lying out in the streets,
with the Red Cross entirely unable to cope with
the trainloads of casualties arriving from the front.

It seemed a marvellous opportunity for me to
get work, and I jumped at it. I had only a few
hours in which to obtain a permit from the War
Office to go on the yacht (which, however, proved
unnecessary) and a passport, which I succeeded in
achieving in firont of a queue of applicants about a
mile long ; and, hurling myself into a taxi, got to
Waterloo only just in time to join Lord Dunraven and
the two Blennerhassetts, mother and daughter, who
were travelling as the hospital staff on the yacht.

It was a cold, grey November day, and a stifiF
gale blowing, and when I saw the Grianaig in
Southampton dock I very nearly took the next train
back to London. For a yacht, she was, as a matter
of fact, fairly spacious, being 500 ton, but to my
panic-stricken eye she seemed more like 50. Never
had I put to sea in anything so inadequate, and long
before we were out of Southampton Water I had
retired to my cabin, where I spent a hideous ni^t.

ICO

THE WINDS OF TIME

praying for the torpedo which we were told would
probably be our fate and which I hoped would
blow me into another and less agonizing world.

sno^nng wheuj after sixteen hours at
sea— several of which had been spent anchored,
in a blizzard, outside— we were finally grudgingly
allowed into Boulogne harbour, where the Grianaig
appeared to arouse as much hostility as if she had
been a German submarine. Whether it was Lord
Dunraven’s appearance in the uniform of a lieu-
tenant in the R.N.R., to which, with Irish origin-
ality, he had added long Wellington top-boots, or
wheAer it was his feminine followers in the shape
of the Bleimerhassetts and myself who excited their
suspicions, I don’t know ; but we were followed by
French detectives who never let us out of their sight
during our tour of the town while awaiting the arrival
of the wounded officers deputed to the Grianaig.

At Lady Dudley’s hospital we found her down
with pneumonia and were told there were no
vacancies on the staff of her hospital or of any
other. I need hardly say that the stories we had
heard in London of the streets of Boulogne being
a shambles of dead and dying were without any
foundation whatsoever. The Red Cross organ-
ization was working without a hitch. The whole
of one of the long piers had been covered in and
was being used as a makeshift hospital for urgent
cases. Lady Algy Gordon Leimox, who was in
charge of it, came to limch on board and after-
wards took us over it. Unfortunately she had no
vacancy, and Sir Alfred Keogh, head of the
R.A.M.G., who was also at limch, could suggest
no opening for me, except at Lady Angela Forbes’s
canteen, admittance to which could only be
obtained, we were told, on payment !

Feeling evoi more utterly superfluous in France

HOME AGAIN

lOI

than I was in England, there was nothing left for
me to do but to return to London, which I in-
tended doing by the next available Channel boat ;
this, however, Lord Dunraven would not hear
of, insisting that there was plenty of room on the
Grianaig, even with the twelve officers who by that
time were collected in the saloon. I protested for
all I was worth that I would only be in the way,
but when I tried to remove my belongings I found
myself told off to play bridge with three of the
officers, who, straight from the trenches, had chosen
this particular form of amusement to beguile them-
selves with on their homeward voyage. They
were, of course, none of them stretcher cases like
those we had seen lying on the deck of the Loefflers’
yacht moored beside us on Boulogne pier, the
sight of whom haunted me for weeks and months.
They could all walk and they could all talk, but
only one of them seemed to have any desire to and
he could not stop. They were still in their muddy
trench-boots and they were perished with cold and
had been through horrors and privations one could
only guess at — but they wanted to play bridge.

The Grianaig, having raised her anchor, put out
to sea, rising, with sickening regularity, up bn end,
and falling into what seemed to be a bottomless
trough. The King of Diamonds hit me in the
eye, the Queen of Spades disappeared into the
depths of the ocean — I held on to the table — ^when
even that slipped from my grasp, I fled . . . only
iust in time. All night — ^when not otherwise
occupied — as I lay in the cabin to which I felt I
had no right, I cinrsed myself and Fate for my
ignominious collapse and my failure to carry on with
ihe only job the war had so far provided me with
— the amusing of three weary, nerve-wracked men.

J02 THE WINDS OF TIME

By Christmas nearly every soldier one had ever
known had been killed. One friend (Major)
Julian Ryan, who had taken command of the
Munsters after the disastrous Battle of Festubert,
still remained— though only for a while — and when
he wrote and asked me to provide the Battalion
with green flags I rushed wildly round London
s e ^ r olling for someone who could design and
embroider them with a Bengal tiger (the Munster
badge). Eventually I found in Sloane Square a
School of Needlework who imdertook the work,
and early in the New Year I got the eight flags
(two for each company) off to France. The Mun-
sters were enchanted with them and I got several
letters of ecstatic thanks. They carried the flags
into the Battle of the Rue du Bois and they figure
prominently in the wonderful picture by F. Matania
of the “ Last General Absolution of the Munsters,”
a copy of which hangs in my bedroom to-day,
inscribed with the appropriate words of Swinburne :

That thdr dust may re-build her a Nation

That their souls may re-light her a Star.

Major Willie Redmond, who came one day later
in the year to Lady MacDonnell’s parcel-packing
depot, for Irish prisoners, in Kensington Palace,
where I was working, wanted similar flags made
for his own Battalion of the Dublins. We were
arranging to have them done when the War Office,
hearing with displeasure of the waving of green
flags on the Western Front, with the narrow-
minded hostility which distinguished it at the time
in all ite dealings with Ireland, forbade the making
or the using of them.

I shall always be glad that the Munsters at any
rate had naine, even though they were, alas, not used,
as antidipated, in the Allied decorations of Berlin.

PART II

Xhere’s sorrow on
There’s sorrow on

the wind, my grief,
the wind.

Gaelic Song.

CHAPTER XI

EASTER WEEK — MY GARDEN — ^VISITORS — ^A SCHOOL

TREAT

I N 1916 I went to live in Ireland for good.

When I told my solicitor, Sir George Lewis,
of my intention he looked horror-struck.

“ You can’t live in Ireland ! ” he exclaimed.
“ You can go there, but nobody could live
there,”

And when I persisted I not only could but would,
“ Whatever will you do there ? ” he inquired
incredulously.

“ I will grow things,” I replied vaguely.

“ Potatoes and moss,” he suggested sarcastically.
Looking out over the dingy roofs and sooty
chimney-pots from his grimy window I smiled as
I closed the door on his sordid office and an equally
sordid chapter in my own life.

Within a week of my return to Caragh came the
news of the Easter Week rebellion in Dublin and
the reports-of a coming German invasion of Ireland.
We had no papers and little authentic news ; only
the wildest rumours spreading like flames in a
forest fire, out of which one fact definitely emerged :
the landing at Banna Strand, in Kerry, of Sir
Roger Casement, in a collapsible boat, with three
revolvers, a green flag and half a sausage — a some-
what inadequate equipment for the emancipation of
Ireland, on which he is supposed to have been
intent.

ion

jo5 THE WINDS OF TIME

In the absence of more detailed information I
felt some difficulty in taking the situation seriously.

It is related of Queen Victoria that a certain
distinguished German once presumed to discuss
with her the possibility of an enemy invasion on
the East Coast of England. Having demonstrated
how easily the landing of a large force could be
carried out without the knowledge of the British
Navy, the triumphant German went on to describe
the army of his country marching on London.

“ What would happen then ? ” he inquired.

“ They would be arrested by the police,” calmly
replied the umuffled Queen : a prophecy which
seems on the present occasion to have been strangely
fulfilled, two policemen having apparently saved
the situation, in which something undoubtedly went
wrong — a not uncommon occurrence in Ireland,
where, in the matter of “ risings ” the national lack
of organization is not infrequently at fault.

On this occasion, a peasant wandering at dawn
on the beach found, tossing in the surf, an empty
boat of an unusual design. Suspecting something
strange, he reported the matter at the nearest police
station to the Sergeant in charge, who, with a con-
stable, hastened to the scene. Close by the boat
the sand was seen to be disturbed ; buried under-
neath it they foimd the revolvers and the flag — a
couple of miles away, hidden in an old fort, a
mysterious stranger whom they promptly arrested
and conveyed to the barracks, where, from a list of
photographs of “ wanted ” criminals, he was im-
mediately identified as Sir Roger Casement.

Meanwhile a suspicious-looking ship flying the
Duteh flag had been sighted close by, in Tralee
Bay, by a British patrol, who ordered her to proceed
to Qjieenstown to be searched. Off the Fastnet
Rock she suddenly himg out the German flag and

STRANGE HAPPENINGS

107

sank, the crew putting off in boats, and subse-
quently admitting that, concealed in the cargo,
were quantities of rifles and ammunition.

The same night— Good Friday— a motor-car with
four mysterious strangers, who had inquired the
way to Valentia Island, ran, in the dark, into the
river at Killorglin. Three were drowned ; the
foiurth escaped, no one knew how or where. The
car was found to have been stolen from a garage in
Limerick. The bodies of the strangers were never
claimed, and were buried without identification.
In some way they were connected with the rising
and, from papers found on their bodies, dragged
from the bottom of the river, to their accidental
death is partly attributed the fiasco of the landing,
which seems to have been intended to take place
simultaneously with the rebellion in Dublin. For
its failure. Providence and the police seem mainly
responsible.

A certain nervousness subsequently prevailed in
the neighbourhood of these disturbing happenings.
A local rising was said to be imminent. Two
elderly ladies living near me called on the local
carpenter, who was also the leading Sinn Feiner of
the district.

“ Are our lives in danger, Patsy ? ” one of them
inquired apprehensively.

“ Not at all, Miss Mary,” was the gallant reply,
“ we shan’t be shooting any ladies tins tarn”

Totally unexpected as the rising was, it seemed
at first to stun Ireland. People in general were
horror-struck and I do not think that even among
S inn Feiners there was any real sympathy with the
rebels until Sir John Maxwell’s executions turned
the tide in their favour. With its holocaust of
martyrs the cause gained in popularity. By the
time the last batch had paid the death penalty, the

jo8 THE WINDS OF TIME

halo which they sought had invested their memories
for all time with imperishable glory. With no
earthly chance, or even hope, of success, deliber-
ately they went out to die ; their only object “ the
saving of Ireland’s soul.”

How well they knew their country they proved
by their sacrifice. In England there is a proverb
to the effect that “ a living dog is better than a
dead lion.” In Ireland, where only the dead may
be said to be really alive, the opposite obtains.
Living, Pearse, the gentle, dreaming visionary,
tparhing and writing of national ideals, Connolly,
thxmdering and declaiming the rights and the
wrongs of Labour, Plunkett and MacDonagh,
singing dirges of Ireland’s mournful past, might
have caused temporary inconvenience to the pohce :
dead, the memory of their martyrdom embitters
to this day the relations between England and
Ireland, inflaming, for generations to come, the
political passions of Ireland.

As W. B. Yeats prophetically writes in “ Countess
Cathleen” :

They shall be remembered for ever ;

They shall be living for ever ;

They shall be speaJdng for ever ;

They have no need for prayers, they have
no need for prayers.

It is, of course, difficult to see what other course
England could have adopted, plunged as she was,
at the moment, in her death struggle with Germany.
Ireland had stabbed her in the back. Magnanimity
was not in the air. The “ shootings ” in Dublin
were ruthlessly carried out : the seven signatories
to the Republican manifesto and five others were
executed at dawn ... a silence seemed to fall on
Ireland, but if one held one’s breath and listened

GARDEN DAYS

109

one could hear somewhere far away the faint
rumbling of the gathering storm.

4: Si: He

Like everything else in Ireland, my garden wore,
that summer, an unsettled look. The political
tension seemed to have obtruded itself into the
herbaceous border, where the bare stems of the
slug-eaten phloxes wore an air of warning of greater
shocks to come. One of my most fiercely Unionist
neighbours refrained from sowing sweet-pea that
year — ^her protest, she explained, against the policy
of the Government, every member of whom she
said she would like to see “ hanging from a lamp-
post.”

My own sweet-pea showed, alas ! litde inclina-
tion to justify the optimism with which it had been
sown in the spring ; the gaping voids in the hedge
it should by now have grown into being explained
by Dan, the gardener, as due to “ damping off,”
the invariable sequel to any enterprise in early
sowing in these parts.

A Kerry garden has much to contend with in the
matter of climate. No sooner has it recovered from
the gales of March than it is parched with the April
drought, “ btimt ” in the searching blast of May,
known as the “ Scariveen,” which, blowing from
the North (a devastating quarter, especially in Ire-
land), brings destruction to the tender growth of
bud and blossom. For a brief space in Jtme I
really did experience the feeling of elation which
comes from fulfilled ambition, only to have my
fleeting satisfaction washed away in the torrential
downpour, lasting from St. Swithin’s Day till the
equinoctial gales finally lay flb,t my dreams and
tore my hopes up by the roots.

But though exasperated by the climate I per-

no THE WINDS OF TIME

sisted in my efforts. Fortunately there is no finality
in gardening. Mistakes can be rectified. A colour
scheme which fails one year can be replaced the
following one. Plants which do not thrive in one
situation can be moved to other more congenial
ones. Flowers, like people, must often dislike their
immediate neighbours quite as much as the soil or
the aspect in which they grow. Mine lived for
years in a state of perpetual motion, which had the
effect of killing off all but the really adaptable,
which flourished amazingly when finally estab-
lished where they could enjoy life.

Being one of those unfortunate people bom with
an artist’s eye but not, alas ! with the hand of one,
the pictures I could not paint on canvas took shape
and colour in the herbaceous borders, by the stream
and in the rock garden lying in the sloping dell
between the house and the lake, the making and
planning of which apparently led to local expres-
sions of doubt as to my sanity.

“ Sure them stones won’t grow,” said Dan, when
I had endeavoured some years before to explain to
him the nature of a garden which, in its earlier
stages, bore undoubted resemblance to a cemetery
the day after the Resurrection.

“ Dan, do you think I’m mad ? ” I inquired.

“Begorra, ma’am, I couldn’t say,” he replied
with the typical evasiveness of the Kerry peasant.

Exhausted by my gardening efforts I used to lie,
in the evenings, in the loggia, in the summer sun,
rejoicing — so far as one could rejoice with the sound
of distant battle always in one’s ears — ^in hours of'
golden idleness, watcliig the shadows lengthening
on the mountains, the waters of the lake reflecting
the changing humours of the sky.

Whether such abandonment in the midst of the
world’s upheaval was justified or not was a matter

LOOKING FOR WAR WORK III

of opinion. All that mattered was that my own
conscience was clear. As we say in Kerry, while
in London “ I did my endeavours,” battering for
weeks at the portals of the Red Gross and the
Y.M.C.A., interviewing secretaries and appearing
before Boards of relentless women who treated the
ojffer of my services much as if I were a criminal
appealing in a police court for mercy ; unbending
sometimes to the extent of placing my name at the
end of a waiting list already comprising thousands
of applicants, but never, in any circumstances,
giving me any encouragement to believe that, even
in the event of the war lasting till the end of time,
my services would be required.

From each of these interviews I returned more
crushed than from the last, feeling there must be
something inherently wrong with me. It could not
be, I decided, that I was not sufficiently intelligent ;
for, looking around the most coveted positions at
home and abroad, it was only too obvious that they
had not been achieved by conspicuous intellectual
merit. It could not be owing to any defect of
moral worth, because with each application I had
forwarded testimonials which would have been
flattering as obituary notices. More likely, I
decided, the opposite was the cause : I was not
sufficiently notorious. Uncertain whether to feel
flattered or humiliated by this solution of my failure
to obtain a permanent job, I applied myself to such
desultory occupations as came to hand : making
bandages, pacing parcels for prisoners, waiting at
a canteen, attending some of the innumerable Com-
mittee meetings which now took the place of “ teas ”
in London, moving on, with the rest of the mem-
bers, before one was over, to the next ; aching
in every limb, but never for a moment feeling
that I was in any way contributing anything

the winds of time

II2

of the slightest importance to the winning of the
war.

* * * * *

On an old sundial in the garden of a Tudor
house I once read this inscription, “ Thinke and
Thanke.”

From my chair on the loggia, looking across the
paved garden, beyond the island, to where the lake
reflected in its still and glassy depths the birch-clad
slopes of the mountain, I often thought that summer
not only of the war, but of former Junes spent
in the feverish fatuity of London seasons, and
“ thanked ” that I was there no more.

For that Jime in Kerry was a revelation of
golden sunshine, of shimmering radiance, of riotous
colour. On the walls of the house Solanum
crispum, a mass of mauve-blue flower, climbed to
the roof ; the brilliant pink rose, Mrs. W. J. Grant,
framed the casement windows ; the Clianthus was
smothered in bunches of scarlet bloom. Between
the browny-yellow flagstones at my feet were
cushions of blue Veronica, tufts of mauve Erinus ;
while in and out of the antiixhinum beds a littie
yellow wagtail — surely a faery bird — Chopped on her
dainty feet, snatching at colossal worms for the
sustenance of her family squawking in their nest
above the loggia pier. At the top of the rock
garden, Prunus Pissardia rose in purple glory above
the clump of broom and golden gorse. Bluebells
under the silver birches reflected the azure of the
sky above. Down by the stream a bank of Azalea
mollis dazzled with its orange-salmon brilliance.
Arum lilies rose with stately grace above the water’s
edge.

Away in the woods the wild crab-apple clothed
in clouds of blossom the slopes above the silvery
lake, on the farther shores of which the mountains.

PAVED GARDEN AT ARD-NA-SIDHE

SOCIETY IS CHEAP

II3

misty blue, with purple shadows clinging to their
sides, stretched away into the mysterious distance
of Dingle Bay.

For a good deal of time I was alone, but never
lonely in the devastating sense of the feeling which
possessed me in a London crowd. Like Christy
Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World, “ If it’s
a poor thing to be lonesome it’s worse, maybe, to
be mixing with the fools of earth,” and, thank God,
I am not so poor a creature that I cannot live
alone. After seventeen years of London I agree
wilJi Thoreau that “ Society is commonly too cheap.
We meet at very short intervals, not having had
time to acquire any new value for each other. We
meet at meals three times a day, and give each
other a taste of that old musty cheese that we are.
We have had to agree on a certain set of rules
called etiquette and politeness to make this frequent
meeting durable and that we need not come to
open war ... we live thick and are in each
other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I
think that we thus lose some respect for one
another . . .” Like him I could say with honesty
that “ I am no more lonely than a single mullein or
dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf or sorrel, or
a horse-fly, or a bumble bee. I am no more lonely
than the Mill Brook, or a weather cock, or the
North Star, or the South wind, or an April shower,
or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new
house.”

But it was not easy to make people understand
this. Agitated relations wrote beseeching me to
invite “ So-and-so ” to keep me company : “ you
must be so bored all by yourself” ; little realizing
that with the advent of the “ So-and-so ” suggested,
complete isolation would immediately set in.

Even the country people, the women I met on

W.T. I

THE WINDS OF TIME

1 14

the road, the men carting turf from the bog, kept
iTisigtirtg that I must find it “ awful quiet above ” —
“ above ” being the local designation for the house
I inhabit, other localities coming imder the heading
of “ back ” or “ away back ” for still remoter
regions. Yet could they but realize it, it was the
very quiet “ above ” which attracted me after the
resdess rush of London, where people are so busy
trying to be clever and trying to get rich that they
have little time to breathe, and none at all to
think.

In the country of the mind the only society that
matters is of the soul. Neighbours, if they are not
neighbours in spirit, if they caimot speak one’s
language or think one’s thoughts, might just as well
not be there at all. As it is, even the stars seemed
nearer to one at times than many of the people I
have found myself thrown amongst in London,
while the remoteness from which I viewed the
world that summer was nothing to the remoteness
in which I had often moved in it.

The few visitors I had were all friends, which is
not always the case with visitors ; the people who
want to come and stay with one seldom being
those one would thi nk of inviting ; like the men
who want to marry one, who are rarely the men
one would think of proposing to oneself, supposing
it were the custom for a woman to do so.

Of all self-invited guests, the woman who lived
in pre-war days, from August to November in her
boxes, was the most dreaded. Every owner of a
country house has had devastating experience of
her. Once upon a tjme something even worse
befell me, in the shape of a guest unknown to me
personally but dumped on me by mutual friends.
She was English, they explained, and anxious to

see ” Ireland. They felt that unless she saw

A PEERLESS VIEW

II5

Kerry she would have no conception of the real
Ireland.

Afterwards I realized the serpent-like quality of
their friendship, and knew that, in asking me to
invite her to my house, they had only one object,
which was to get her out of their own.

She arrived : and already as I greeted her
on the doorstep I foimd myself inquiring of
Heaven what in the world I had done to what she
called “ our mutual friends,” that they should sud-
denly have become enemies for life. I gave her
' tea. She gave me the history of her life, disclosing,
to my horror, as strangers sometimes will, in un-
sought confidences, the secret emptiness of a singu-
larly arid mind. We adjourned to the terrace.
She looked at the lake, bathed in the rosy glow
of the setting sun ; at the purple-stemmed fir-trees
rising from the water’s edge ; across to the farthest
shore, where drifts of wraith-like cloud lay on the
slopes of See Fin ; round by the rocky heights
above the birch-clad hollow of Oolagh, to the bay,
lying dark and green, beneath the shadow of the
island.

“ Exactly like Scotland,” she announced.

I expected that. It is an unfailing remark with
visitors of a certain type.

Of course it was not always Scotland my peerless
view resembled. Sometimes it was Italy, some-
times Switzerland or Norway. I have even known
it compared to the Seychelles Islands ; by a
sailor, to Scapa Flow ; and once a small boy, aged
seven, accompanying his mother, exclaimed, “ Oh,
Mummy, isn’t it just like the Serpentine ? ”

On this occasion my visitor proceeded :

“ I’m not very fond of moimtains, they make me
feel so sad — ^and water is very depressing, isn’t
it?”

THE WINDS OF TIME

1 16

I did not agree.

“ It must be awful here in winter,” she continued
cheerfully.

In a voice reminiscent of the severest frost that
ever nipped the buds of spring, I replied that even
in summer there were occasions when it could be
awful ; and led her to her room.

For two days — and rainy ones at that — and two
interminable evenings, spent over the fire listening
to her ceaseless vapouiings, mostly of love — her
experiences of which had been, I need hardly say,
of the most blameless description — ^waiting for the
clock to strike some hour at which I could with
decency bid her good night, I endured her ; and
then, finding that her intention was to stay with
me indefinitely, with the shameless disregard for
truth for which my race is famed, I told her she
looked ill.

There was nothing on earth the matter with her,
but the suggestion of ill-health is one which few
women ever resist. She consented to spend the
following morning in bed. She appeared at lunch,
but, persuading her that she was worse, I induced
her to return to her room till dinner. The next
day, I anticipated her descent to the drawing-
room for tea by sending it to her room an hour
earlier than usual, and threatened to wire for the
doctor if she attempted to get up for dinner. By
the end of the week I had seen her off to the
station, pale and wan, booked to London to con-
sult a specialist, convinced that her days on earth
were numbered.

Immoral, perhaps, but it was my only chance.
One or other of us had to collapse, and she, being
the hardier of the two, would recover the sooner.

^ Since then, the years have brought discrimina-
tion. And the war which swept away so many of

A SCHOOL TREAT

II7

our friends and our visitors also simplified our
entertaining.

Personally I have a horror of parties, and as I
always endeavour to avoid as much as possible all
enterprises which entail the wearing of a fixed and
vacuous smile for an indefinite number of hours,
I seldom give anything which could be dignified
by the name of one. Individually I am always
delighted to see my friends ; collectively they have
the effect of completely unnerving me. On the
rare occasions when I have been misguided enough
to invite a large and indiscriminate crowd to my
house I have seldom felt that the experiment was
entirely successful. At any rate, whatever the
feelings of my guests may have been, I have rarely,
under the circumstances, enjoyed myself.

The school feast over which I presided at
Caragh was, however, a pleasant contrast to the
restrained gloom of some of my former London
entertainments. For one thing, the juvenile popu-
lation of Kerry is neither blase nor dyspeptic, like
most of my society acquaintances, and as they had
never had a treat of the kind before this particular
one it certainly did not suffer from the bKghting
effects of comparison, the most fatal of all deterrents
to hospitality.

Dan, to whom I first confided my project of a
school feast, considered that “ it could be very
nice.” It is significant of the inhabitants of the
South of Ireland that the present tense of the verb
is non-existent, conversation being entirely carried
on by means of the future and conditional mood.
Dan, I may mention incidentaEy, was not only a
gardener but a diplomatist. He always agreed
with me, and nothing ever put him out. No matter
how many times he foimd himself requested to dig
up and replant the same border or the same bed, he

THE WINDS OF TIME

Il8

was equally full of admiration for the new arrange-
ment as he was for the old, “ it could be very nice
here and it could be very nice the way we had it,”
being his nnfailing and tactful remark.

To return, however, to the school treat. It
appeared that once upon a time a former employer
of Dan’s had also provided an entertainment which
had, on that occasion, taken the form of a Christ-
mas tree. It was Dan himself “ that had dressed
it ” and I was given to understand that he would be
pleased to undertake the responsibility again in the
event of my deciding upon the same form of hos-
pitality. In spite of the fact that we were in Ire-
land, where times and seasons proverbially wait
upon man instead of man being a slave to them,
the idea of a Christmas tree in September somehow
did not altogether appeal to me. I suggested
instead tea on the lawn, followed by games and
“sports.” “Well, that could be very nice, too,”
said Dan.

My next move took the form of calling on the
schoolmistress. As it was holiday time, instead of
going to the school, I went to her house. A little
girl opened the door.

“ Is Mrs. Maguire in ? ” I inquired.

“ She do be gone out,” was the reply.

“ Will she be in soon ? ” I asked.

“ I couldn’t say.”

“ Has she been gone long ? ” I next asked,
t hin king I might possibly overtake her on the
road.

“ Not so very long thin.”

“ Which way did she go ? ” I finally inquired of
this decidedly bafiSing handmaiden.

“ She’s to the Isle of Man,” was the ilhimina tincr
reply.

Undar the circumstances there was nothing to

IRISH CHILDREN

1 19

be done but to go home and await the return of
Mrs. Maguire from her travels.

About a fortnight later, the school term being in
full swing, I walked, not without a certain amount
of trepidation, up the gravel path which leads to
the National School, an edifice of the usual uncom-
promising hideousness, situated on the edge of a
bog and in the midst of some of the most lovely-
scenery in Ireland. Mrs. Maguire received me
sympathetically. Seventy little girls in pinafores,
with bare feet, fixed me with an expression of dis-
concerting interest and surprise. Having explained
my mission, after a consultation -with the head-
master, my invitation for the following Saturday
was accepted with so much enthusiasm that I felt
sufficiently emboldened by the success of my -visit
to ask that I might hear the children at their
lessons.

“ Oh, the poor litde things,” said Mrs. Maguire
in a deprecating voice, “ they are not like the
children in England ; they have not the same
education at all.” In making this remark, Mrs.
Maguire did so, no doubt, out of deference to what
she presumed would be my point of view. As a
matter of fact, it immediately aroused my indigna-
tion. A persistent attempt to regard me as Eng-
lish, just because it happened to have been my
misfortune to spend several wholly unprofitable
years in England, is distressing enough to anybody
bom, like myself, in Kerry : to hear the children
of Ireland depreciated for my benefit was more
than I could bear.

" You are entirely mistaken, Mrs. Maguire,” I
replied with great dignity. “ Irish children are
quite as well educated as English ones. . They are
not only more intelligent but better conducted and
better mannered. English children carmot in any

120

THE WINDS OF TIME

way be compared to Irish children. In education
as well as in everything else Irish children are far
ahead of the English.” I grew quite heated and
said a great deal more on the subject, which, in
the interest of Truth, I had perhaps better not
repeat.

“ Well now, to be sure ! ” exclaimed Mrs.
Maguire, when I had finished.

After this outburst of patriotism on my part, I
naturally refused to take any interest in anything
but the Irish class. All the same, after several
fhiitless attempts to grapple with a sentence
chalked up for my benefit on the blackboard, I
wisely withdrew before displaying my total in-
ability to cope with a language whose national
characteristics are easily recognized in the com-
plete independence existing between the spelling
and the pronunciation.

Punctually, on the appointed day, the children
marched in procession up the avenue to the house,
each child carrying a mug, which, after they had
seated themselves on the grass, was filled with tea,
while large slabs of bread and jam and cake were
handed roxmd on trays. The solemnity of this part
of the proceedings was, as is generally the case at
children’s parties, somewhat overpowering. And
yet it has always seemed to me Aat children on
these occasions display very much more wisdom
tha n their elders. Nobody who has something
really good to eat ever wants to talk. Only a
duld, however, has the moral courage to remain
deaf and dumb to everything that is not immedi-
ately concerned with the next helping.

Once the games and the sports began, the pro-
ceedings grew hilarious.' The three-legged races,
in which the first starters were Dan’s father, aged
dghty, and my new housemaid, immediately placed

“ LET ERIN REMEMBER ” 1 21

matters on an uproarious footing. The sack races,
in which the competing boys fell in heaps on top of
each other ; the hill-climbing competition in which
an infant of three arrived in the first heat at the
top of a precipitous mound ; the tug-of-war, the
various races and games, all met with wild success.

Only one little girl sat apart from the rest,
big tears rolling from her enormous blue eyes.
“ Please, ma’am, I’m sick,” was her reply to my
solicitous inquiries ; followed by “ Please, ma’am,
I had too much sweet cake,” by way of explanation
for the misfortune which had overtaken her.

Later, the children assembled on the terrace in
front of the house and the schoolmaster proceeded
to make a speech. Beginning with a flowery
reference to “ the lake of crystal like a sea of glass
spread at our feet,” he went on to show that,
though much of the beauty of the scene was un-
doubtedly due to the Almighty, there was no deny-
ing the fact that the original conception had been
largely improved upon by me. Flattered as I
naturally felt at this coupling of my name with that
of the Creator, I was distinctly relieved when a
breeze got up and extinguished the light by which
he had gone on to read a grossly exaggerated
accovmt of my talents and virtues.

“ The candle has quinched on me,” he remarked
plaintively. Instead of providing him with another,
I su^ested the children should sing. The sound
of their clear young voices in that most haunting
of melodies, “ Let Erin remember the days of old,”
their happy faces outlined against the backgroxmd
of mountains and lake bathed in the golden light of
the setting sun, made an unforgetable impression.

Personally, I had only one regret in wishing
them good-bye, and that was that I could not have
a sclmol treat everjrday.

CHAPTER XII

MRS. DALY DISCOURSES — PUCK FAIR — SKERRY WEDDINGS

“ ry^HE Allies is bet,” said Mrs. Daly, who was

X picking gooseberries in the garden for
the market.

“ Oh,” I remarked.

“ It do be common talk,” continued Mrs. Daly,
slightly netded at the implication of incredulity
expressed in my voice, “ and the Kayser he’s after
saying how he’ll take Ireland to give to his daughter
for a kitchen garden when he’d be dying, and how
he’d be having his dinner at Killamey at Lord
Kenmare’s mansion, no less.”

“ Where did you hear that ? ” I inquired.

“ I read it on the paper.”

“ What paper ? ”

“ I forget what it was called then, but I read it
all right.”

“ How win Ireland like beii^ under the Ger-
mans ? ” I inquired.

“ The Germans is a great people,” replied Mrs.
Daly evasively. “ Himself worked for them in
America, a decent, quiet people, he said, paying
the wages very reg’lar.”

“ Don’t the English pay regularly too ? ”

“ Indeed and they do, but they have a right to
give Ireland her freedom.”

Mrs. Daly passed, with a snort, under a goose-
berry bush out of my sight. I observed with regret
that she did not pick systematically, but flitted with

A BRIDE

123

the inconsequence of her race from bush to bush,
helping herself to the largest and choicest berries
from each.

“ Do you remember Katie ? ” she inquired,
rising up, after an interval, out of a thicket of
“ Yellow Ambers,” disentangling the thorny spikes
out of her already considerably tattered garments.

To my disappointment I foimd the conversation,
possibly out of deference to my prejudice, had
been changed.

“ Katie ? ” I repeated vaguely.

“ Me husband’s brother’s niece — her with the
wooden leg. She’s after getting married to a
soldier.”

“ Goodness ! ” I exclaimed, visions of Katie,
and what she used to describe as her “ blasted
leg,” recalling themselves painfully to my memory.
“ Katie married ? Why, it must be fifteen years
since we got her into the hospital.”

“ Well, they got her out of it last Tuesday week,”
said Mrs. Daly, “ to get her married.”

I gasped. Katie, who, fifteen years ago, was
middle-aged and suffering from an incurable com-
plaint, as a bride, staggered me into speechlessness.

“Them separation allowances is grand,” con-
tinued Mrs. Daly. “ The boy she married went
off to France the very next day as ever was, and
eighteen and six a week Katie do be getting all
the time he’s away. It’d be a pity if the war were
to end now she’s out of the hospital and settled
so comfortable.”

One had of course often heard of these marriages,
arranged at the end of a soldier’s leave, when,
primed with drink, he would fall into the toils of
a designing family, awzikening to find himself
married to some perfectly impossible creature.
But Katie of the “blasted leg” . . .

THE WINDS OF TIME

124

I gasped continuously.

“Them gooseberries is grand,” said Mrs. Daly
after a pause. “ I’ll get great profit out of them.
Throwing dice for them, the children do be in the
town; and all the other hawkers wanting to
know where I got them ! ‘ In the garden,’ says

I ; and why should I be letting them know ’twas
you that gave them to me ? ‘ In what garden ? ’
sez they. ‘ In the garden where they grew,’ sez
I. ‘ Mary Daly,’ says they, ‘ aren’t you the divil
painted ? ’ ”

In spite of Mrs, Daly the Allies held on. Her
views, however, on the subject of the war were
those universally held by her class.

Disraeli is reported to have said that whenever
he wanted to know what the middle classes of
England were thinking, he asked Queen Victoria
her opinion. On the same principle, when I
wanted to probe into the inmost thoughts of
Ireland, I used to “ draw ” Mrs. Daly ; luring
her down from her mountain fastness with promises
of discarded garments, or branches for firing, or,
as on this occasion, the offer of gooseberries. A
German victory, I gathered from her garrulous
conversation, would be popular owing to the
widely held belief that “Germany would give
Ireland her freedom.” Quite useless were my
protestations that it was the last thing she would
be likely to bestow on Ireland. Undergroxmd
propaganda was imdoubtedly at work. The war
was popular not only with the “ Katies ” and the
“ Bridgets ” living in unwonted luxury on separ-
ation allowances, but with the farming class, to
wtem rising prices of horses and cattle were
brii^ing a hitherto unknown prosperity.

At “ Puck Fair ” prices were soaring. This
remarkable festival, held in Killorglin on August

PUCK

ee

»

125

II and lasting for three days — ^known respectively
as “ Gathering Day,” “ Fair Day,” and “ Scatter-
ing Day ” — is an event of such importance in
Kerry that everything local dates from it ; all
happenings of interest being recorded in popular
memory as having occurred “ a week before
Puck ” or “ a month after,” as the case may be.

On top of the steep hill forming the main street
of the town, enthroned on a high and decorated
scaffolding, the “ Puck ” (which is the Irish for
goat), his horns tied up with green ribbons, pre-
sides over the gathering, the distinguishing feature
of which is a wild confusion of stampeding cattle,
terrified sheep, plunging horses, backing carts,
blind beggars, fighting tinkers, fortune-tellers with
roulette boards, old women with barrows selling
dried fish, unripe apples stolen from the neigh-
bouring orchards, gingerbread and bull’s-eyes.

The origin of the goat as the presiding deity of
the fair seems to have been lost in the mists of
time. Some maintain that it dates from Crom-
wellian days, when a flock of goats rushing from
the mountains into the town warned the inhabit-
ants of the approaching soldiers and so saved the
lives of the inhabitants. Others believe it to be
of even older origin. A more possible theory is
that in the year of the great famine, when all the
cattle in the country had died of starvation, a
solitary goat being the only animal ofifered for sale,
it was put on a pedestal and decorated with ribbons.

My first visit to Puck Fair, I am told, was at the
age of eleven days, when I was carried there in
the arms of the monthly nurse from Cork, whose
imauthorized disappearance with the baby created
a panic in the house. On our return in the evenii^
I believe we were both disinfected before being
allowed into the presence of my horrified mother.

THE WINDS OF TIME

126

On the occasion of my last visit, nearly half a
century later, I could not help feeling a similar
process of purification might not come amiss.

Out of the seething crowd of farmers and dealers
r lifimssing cattle and prices on the Fair green, a
large red-haired, red-faced jobber from Limerick,
contemptuously eyeing a drove of Kerry bullocks,
bargaining in accustomed style with a local farmer,
obtruded himself between me and the pavement.

“A hundred quid, Mr. Doyle,” he suggested
with a spit and an air of having, if anything,
exceeded the limits of speculative generosity.

“ A hundred and fifty,” spiritedly replied the
owner of the bullocks.

“ Come now, be raysonable ; everything is on
the down line.”

“ The down line, is it ? I tell you, Mr. Quin,
prices is killing me. Four pounds , an acre I’m
after offering for the grazing of a hundred acres,
four hundred poimds a year, and I didn’t get it
at that.”

“ And you never expected you would,” replied
Mr. Quin. “ One hundred quid I’m offering you
for them bullocks.”

“ Ye’d ruin me.”

“ I’m mined meself,” replied Mr. Quin, osten-
tatiously producing a large roll of notes, which
he proceeded to count between a well-moistened
fiiger and thumb.

“ Gome now, you’ll get no better offer. There’s
no buyers at the fair at all,” he remarked untmth-
fuUy, replacing the notes in an inner pocket.

Mr. Doyle, with an assumption of utter in-
difference, surveyed the leaden skies.

“ Is that young fellow your son ? ” he inquired
al^entmindedly, after a pause, indicating a small
boy standing beade Mr. Qjiin, sucking bull’s-eyes.

127

CATTLE JOBBING

“ He is, I’m learning him j'obbing.”

“ Ye’ll be learning him to tell a lot of lies, I’m
thinking,”

“ I’m not learning him lies at all, Mr, Doyle,”

“ He’ll have a damn bad chance as a jobber so,”
remarked Mr, Doyle, preparing to move on,

“ And the himdred quid I’m after offering
you? ” inquired Mr, Quin, anxiously watching
Mr. Doyle’s preparations for departure.

“Ah, don’t be talking,” said Mr. Doyle.

“ Well, will we make it a draw ? ”

“ Don’t be delusionizing yourself, Mr. Quin, it
will be no draw,” firmly replied Mr. Doyle, pushing
his way through the crowd in search of a buyer
less “ stiff ” than Mr, Quin.

As usually happens on fair days in Ireland, it
was raining — a fact which seemed to deter nobody
from greeting their friends with the remark, “ Fine
day,” to which all and sundry, with equally un-
warrantable optimism, replied, “ It is indeed,
thank God.”

Up and down the town all day, in the mist and
the mud, the buying and bargaining, with intervals
for refreshment, continued. In the afternoon,
the crowd, reinforced by girls in hats of dazzling
smartness, surged beneath the “ Puck,” round
which, in booths, an enormous trade was being
done ; each garment displayed being accompanied
by facetious remarks from the auctioneer and witty
sallies from the onlookers. Every now and again
a drove of sheep or a stampeding cow would charge
wildly into their midst, scattering women and
children ; while the news that “ Maggie McKenna’s
father-in-law had sold his little ‘ harse ’ to a dealer
from Cork ” sent a whole cavalcade off with a
rush to the green to assist in the completion of the
bargain.

128 the winds of time

T.iTfft so many other festivities in the world,
“ Puck,” owing to the war, was said to be no
longer what it used to be. To me personally it
seemed neither more nor less melancholy than on
any previous occasion. What changes were to
be noted were all for the better. Higher prices,
less drink, less fighting. As a fair undoubtedly
it was a success ; as an entertainment it may
possibly compare favourably with a funeral, which
is almost the only other recognized form of amuse-
ment in the country districts of Kerry, where
people living lonely and remote lives find, in the
mere fact of a crowd of any kind, the occasional
stimulus and excitement necessary to existence in
the wild and desolate places of the earth.

Thirty thousand pounds, the Manager subse-
quently told me, had passed over the counter of
&e local Bank during the course of the Fair — a
sum which would have seemed incredible to any-
one unacquainted with the extraordinary financial
arrangements of the Kerry fanner, to whom money
is a mysterious and almost terrifying possession,
which he never spends, but places on deposit at
the Bank, where apparently it remains for all time :
since, when desperately in need of money, he will
borrow firom the same bank at 6 per cent, or 7 per
cent, rather than intrude on the nest-egg for which
he may be receiving only i per cent, or at the most
2 per cent.

In no case is any surplus money made at fairs
spent on improving the standard of living, people
often with hundred of pounds in the Ba^ giving
an impression of poverty verging on starvation.
That even the poorest-looking farmer has means
at his disposal is proved by the sums forthcoming
when it is a question of making nuns of his daughters
or providing matches for his offspring. As in

THE girls’ “fortunes” I2g

France, every girl has a dot, so in Kerry every
former’s daughter has a “ fortune.” The bargain-
ing for husbands and wives is done by the parents
on market or fair days, and, over the inevitable
glass of whisky, the future of the rising generation
is arranged. The young people themselves, though
never coerced if really unwilling, are seldom con-
sulted, the parents haggling like any Whitechapel
Jew over terms ; and often a match will fall through
owing to the parents of the “ boy ” refusing to part
with an extra heifer, or those of the girl holding on
to a few pounds : a “ fortune ” taking, as a rule,
the form of a mixed amount of cash and cattle.
The extraordinary part of the bargain is that a
girl never gets the benefit of her own fortune, which
is invariably used as a dowry for the brothers and
sisters of the bridegroom.

The wedding, when it finally comes off, is, of
course, the occasion for a great deal of hilarity and
refireshment, the female relations partaking of
“ sherry wine,” or whisky mixed with raspberry
vinegar to make it look like claret. The happy
couple spend the afternoon driving round the
country, followed and “ hoorooshed ” by the whole
wedding party in cars and donkey-carts ; returning
in the evening to the ancestral home of the bride-
groom. The marriages thus arranged, it may
incidentally be remarked, turn out, as a rule, no
less satisfoctoiily — ^more sb, perhaps — ^than if the
young people had the arranging of matters them-
selves ; Irish people making not only excellent
husbands and wives, but kind and affectionate
parents to the swarms of children resulting from
these mercenarily inspired unions.

CHAPTER XIII

A QUESTION OF BUTTER — CONSCRIPTION — ^THE
BLOCKADE OF KILLORGLEN — ^A RAID

I N the spring of 1918 I went over to London,
where I came in for two air-raids which I
ratha: enjoyed : one in the middle of dinner, the
other in the middle of the night. On neither
occasion did I feel the slightest temptation to seek
cover in the cellar. On the first I repaired with
my hostess to the nursery, where the children slept,
without even turning in their beds, throughout Ae
most deafening crashes and bangs to which it has
ever been my fate to listen. On the second, I
remained fin^y in bed, in spite of frantic appeals
to descend to a lower floor, reflecting that the
chance of my being killed was only one in a
thousand or a million — I forget which — and that
if I were it would save a great deal of trouble all
round for me to be already “ laid out ” on my bed.

Apart from these diversions I found London
much the same as usual: no outward or visible
effects of the war except in the exorbitant prices
of everything and a general snappiness of manner
in shop assistants and bus conductors, obviously
due to overstrained nerves ; not quite so much
of the national self-sufficiency observable in the
men who had not been out ; pathetic cheerfulness
in those who had ; in their wives and mothers the
same maurveUous restraint, and courage which is
of the very foimdations of the English woman’s

130

WAR SHORTAGE

I3I

nature. Among the girls a certain cattishness to
each other struck me as somewhat deplorable ;
otherwise little outward change. Only one subject
of conversation : Food Rations.

As to Ireland, I soon became painfuUy aware
that though, in time, even the Rebellion might be
forgotten, never woiild Ireland be forgiven for
having butter when England could not even get
margarine. Wherever I went, the heinousness of
our national plenty was brought home to me. The
less margarine there was on the table, the more
people wzixed sarcastic about butter in Ireland.
Useless for me to proclaim Ireland’s shortage in other
commodities. We had no rations, no qumes and
plenty of butter — there was nothing more to be said.

Well, of course we had no rations although some-
thing in the way of them had been attempted.
Did not two members of the R.I.C. call on me in
person with a card entitling me to a restricted
quantity of sugar from the local grocer, who
gallantly informed me, when I presented it to him,
that I need not be “ throubling ” myself on the
matter, since there was “ no regulation yet made
that you could not drive a coach and four through
in KiUorglin.”

As for queues — no self-respecting Irish crowd
would ever line up in one. Unlike the docile
English, who would patiently wait for three hours
in the rain on the off chance of an ounce of mar-
garine, the nucleus of a queiu collecting outside a
shop in an Irish town would inevitably lead to a
street row. People with sufficient optimism to
take up a position in the front row woiild certainly
have their heads broken by the later arrivals,
while, in the resultant general n^Ue, the more
enterprising onlookers would loot the shop. Would
any pat of butter be worth so much disturbance ?

THE WINDS OF TIME

132

Apart from the butter question I found little
evidence of shortage in London. In no house in
which I stayed did I ever suffer even a passing
pang of hunger. People entertained as usual,
only on a slightly restricted menu. The restaurants
were as good as ever. It is no deprivation, at any
rate to me, to go without meat, when fish and eggs
and vegetables are to be had in sufficiency. But
then in Ireland we do not set the same store by
our food as they do in England, where people have
been used for generations to four square meals a
day, and to take prodigious exercise after one in
order to get up an appetite for the next. In
chronically imderfed Ireland there was not the
same necessity for rations. Our restricted appe-
tites and incomes are a guarantee at any time
against waste. Few, indeed, were the people in
this country who could then afford to pay 25’. 9 ^?.
per lb. for iDutter, lod. a lb. for sugar. Everybody
did with less. The poor went without, I know
plenty of families in which, in ordinary times, tiny
children live on black tea, dry bread and potatoes,
and often even the latter give out. In slightly
more prosperous districts, meat, in the shape of a
pig’s head, is a Sunday treat, and an occasional
egg may be forthcoming ; but even among the
small fanner class, which could afford something
more appetizing, the same indifference to food
prevails. Year in, year out, in peace and in war,
the same monotonous, semi-starvation diet prevails
and is responsible for more than half of Ireland’s
undigested troubles.

On returning home I found Ireland in hysterics
at the prospect of conscription. A strike having
beea prochumcff as a protest, for weeks we had
no trains, no posts, nothing but the wildest
rumouts ; and Knn Fein prepared to resist to the

EXCITEMENTS

133

last man. Republican “armies” sprang up in
every district. Mysterious strangers, from nobody
knew where, proceeded to initiate the inhabitants,
by the light of the moon, in the art of “ forming
fours,” a performance accompanied by much
yelling and the beating of tin cans. My front gate
being, for some time, the rendezvous of the bel-
ligerent youth of the neighbourhood, I sent them
a request, by Dan, not to make quite so much
noise. In return I received an assurance that the
last thing they wished to do was to armoy me, and
they gallantly moved on to the next gate down the
road.

The following night, some time after I had gone
to bed, I was awakened by the sound of a shot
close to the house. I rang my bell several times
— ^no response. I got up and went to the servants’
rooms and found their beds empty. Complete
darkness downstairs. A rush of wind met me in
the kitchen passage, and I realized that the back
door was open and the servants out. I locked the
door and took up a strategic position on the back
stairs. Soon after midnight I heard a tapping
and let in the cook, giving her a month’s notice
as I did so ; a little later the parlourmaid and,
soon after her, the housemaid arrived. Having
given each of them notice also, I retired to bed,
my feelings slightly relieved by the sound of their
sobs.

N^t day I was told they were all members of
the Cumam-na-mBan and that, every night, after
I had gone to bed, they were to be foimd drilling
at the gate and route-marching round the country
with the “ boys.” The firing of the shot into their
midst by some unknown person, in the wood above
the road, had been their undoing. It created a
panic, everybody had scattered precipitately ; each

THE WEMBS OF TIME

134

of the maids had fled home separately in a state of
terror, culminating in complete collapse at the
vision of “ the mistress ” in her dressing-gown at
the back door.

Two nights later, the F s were visited by a

band of armed and masked men, the Colonel held
up in his pyjamas, with revolvers pointed at his
head, the house searched ; two guns, a gold watch
and a Treasury-note case containing five pounds
having been eventually removed.

Caragh seethed with excitement. In the opinion
of its inhabitants it was the quietest place in the
world. To take an occasional gun was, of course,
“ no harm ” : what Caragh could not understand
was the fact that any one of its inhabitants could
have sunk to such depths of infamy as to take the
Colonel’s watch and his money.

The Post Office was fiill to overflowing when I
arrived there. It was one of the few days in the
week when Caragh held communication with the
outer world. For the Great War which had up-
heaved Europe and brought empires into the dust
had also left its mark on us. For three years there
had now been no post out on Sundays or in on
Mondays, while the Post Office was closed on
Tuesda)^ for the sale of stamps and the despatching
of telegrams — an arrangement which, while it may
possibly have helped to win the war, undoubtedly
led to congestion on Wednesdays in a place princi-
pally used as a Bvueau of Information, and presided
over by a Post Mistress addicted to making the
most of the facilities afforded by her profession for
the acquiring of local intelligence.

“ The Colonel is in a terrible way,” she re-
maiked, displaying for the benefit of her audience
the large bundle of letters she was engaged in
stampii^. “He’s after writing three letters to

CARAGH IS SHOCKED

135

agents in Dublin to let the house for him, and one
to the Irish Times — ‘ Lawlessness in Ireland ’ it’s
called ; and there’s been telegrams all the morning
to the military and the police.”

The “Boots” from the hotel, throwing down a
large leather bag, spat thoughtfully on the floor.

“ Ireland wiU never be free now,” he remarked
pessimistically.

An ardent Siim Feiner of the type addicted to
peaceable drilling on fine nights, he was sternly
opposed to any display of belligerency — z. sub-
stantial deposit in the savings bank making him
view with leniency the occupation of Ireland by a
moneyed, if alien, race of English tourists. At the
same time he was at heart a true patriot, and in
the disgrace that had fallen on the Siim Feiners of
Caragh it seemed for the moment as if the sacrifices
of Wolfe Tone, of Emmett and Lord Edward
Fitzgerald had been made in vain.

“ Whoever done it,” said Jamesy Moyniham, the
shoemaker, fiercely licking a stamp on a letter to
his married daughter in America, “ it wasn’t Siim
Feiners. There’s plenty of lads about who’d take
the guns right enough, but only blackguards would
take money.”

The gloom deepened in the Post Office. An
exploit which would certainly have added lustre
to the achievements of the local Republicans had
it been confined to the raiding of the Colonel’s
guns had degenerated into a common burglary,
a crime without precedent in the country districts
of Ireland.

“ A low pack of robbers,” said the “ Boots.”

“ It must have been strangers,” suggested the
Post Mistress.

A gleam of hopefulness radiated through the
Post Office. It was significant of Celtic mentality

THE WINDS OF TIME

136

that, while everybody was perfectly aware of their
identity, in no circumstances would anybody be-
tray the criminals. An incident had occurred of
which Caragh was thoroughly ashamed. In the
circumstances nobody would accept responsibility
for it.

“ Strangers it was that done it,” everybody
agreed with everybody else. “ Only a pack of
common robbers would take money.”

The crowd dispersed hopefully down the road.

The west wind was blowing softly across the bog.
The lake lay shimmering in the April sunshine,
its shores ablaze with golden gorse.

An armoured car, symbol of Britain’s might,
sent in response to the Colonel’s telegraphic appeal
to the forces of the Crown, lay helplessly across the
road. Soldiers in tin hats hurried, with harassed
coimtenances, around it. A youthfiil officer philo-
sophically smoked a cigarette in the ditch. The
grey, unwieldy monster, constructed to move with
equal facility backwards and forwards and side-
ways, could not be prevailed upon to travel in
any direction whatsoever. A Ford car, containing
two policemen, paused to offer suggestions to the
soldiers. The Protestant rector dismounted from
his bicycle to discuss the outrage with the youthful
officer.

“ It almost makes me forget I’m a Christian,”
he remarked ; “ I should like to shoot the scoundrels.
Imagine taking mon^ ! ”

At the house the Colonel explained to me : “ It’s
not the bally guns I mind (the best ones I sent long
ago to* the barracks), but that they should take my
money and my watch — good God ! what is the
countiy coming to ? ”

Nobody knew. The wildest rumours prevailed.
More armoured cars appeared on the scene.

CONSCRIPTION

137

Aeroplanes were expected daily. Conscription,
it was said, was to be carried out by force. Every-
body was to be “ taken,” even the old age pension-
ers : a rumour which sent every man in the place
in precipitate flight to the mountains. The priest
told the women and girls in outlying districts to
repair immediately to the towns for protection from
the “ brutal and licentious soldiers.” Black troops,
they said, were being sent to Ireland to terrorize
the population. The origin of this scare intrigued
me for some time. Eventually I traced it to its
source. The Black Watch was under orders to
proceed to Tralee.

Nothing, it will be seen, was too fantastic for the
popular imagination, bursting with indignation at
Britain’s latest injustice, implying that the Irish
were a subject race from whom tribute could be
claimed without their consent. Coming at a
moment when Ireland was fiercely asserting her
right to national independence, its only effect was
to unite all the conflicting Nationalist elements
in the country : to drive practically all Ireland
into the arms of Sinn Fein.

Whether the state of the Allied Forces justified
it or not, one did not then know. When, a few
months later, after four long years of blood and
mud, of human agony, of material waste and
destruction, the madness of the world at last came
to an end, Sinn Fein Ireland was more than ever
convinced that conscription had never been any-
thing but a sinister political plot on the part of
England. In any case, since it could not possibly
have been carried out, it would have been wiser
if it had never been attempted.

CHAPTER XIV

DUBLIN— rrS INTELLIGENTSIA — ^LOOKING FOR A FLAT

A fter three months in Dublin, spent mostly
in the hands of doctors, I found myself the
following spring at home once more, poorer in
spirit as well as in pocket.

I have always had rather a contempt for people
who went in for operations. Never in any cir-
cumstances did I contemplate indulging in one
myself ; and if I had not gone to Dublin I imagine
I never would. Finding myself, however, in the
capital of Ireland, it was inevitable that I should
fall into the clutches of the medical profession.
Everybody who goes there does. Not even the
healthiest can hope to escape. For one thing,
there are nothing but doctors in Dublin. Every
second house in every fashionable square and street
has a brass plate on the door. There must be at
least two doctoiB to every potential patient : one
to operate and one to apply the anaesthetic. For
myself, I struggled as best I could against delivering
my body up to satisfy the curiosity of a Dublin
specialist. Persuaded by friends to obtain medical
advice, I had gone as far as malang an appointment
with one for a certain day, when my spirit rose in
revolt. I wrote and said I was too ill to keep my
appointment. This, unfortunately, only seems to
have served to stimulate his professional curiosity,
for within an hour he was at my bedside, and the
next day I found myself, protesting furiously, in a

DXJBLIN

139

nursing-home where nobody paid the slightest
attention to anything I said. A great deal more
annoyed than ill, I made up my mind to die under
the operation, if only for the satisfaction of supply-
ing both the doctor and nurses with the rmpleasant
advertisement of an inquest in the Home, Entirely
against my will, somehow I survived. Nobody
except myself seemed in the least surprised. It
was, I gathered, the usual procedure. By slow
degrees I became not only accustomed to, but
absorbed in, the atmosphere of the Home, develop-
ing a positively passionate attachment to the Doctor
and the Matron. When the day of my departure
approached, I wept and besought them to allow
me to remain for ever. They kept me for another
week, and then, once more, I found myself in a
grey, unsympathetic world, no longer an object of
solicitous consideration, the dissipated recipient of
exotic fruit, and carnations at one and sixpence
each. “ There’s nothing the matter with you at
all,” I was told, when, pale and wan, I suggested
telephoning for the doctor. As a matter of fact, I
felt much more ill after the operation than before.
“ People always do,” they told me.

January froze itself into February ; February
rained itself out and March blew itself in with
customary Irish violence. My convalescence estab-
lished, I started to explore Dublin, where I had
never stayed before except, as a bird of passage, for
a few days in Horse Show time, or as a guest, in
years gone by, behind the sheltered portals of the
Viceregal Lodge.

In Ireland you will never hear anything but
abuse of Dubhn. DirW> dingy, dull, decayed are
the epithets usually bestowed upon it. It is all
these and much more besides, which is perhaps not
obvious, save to those who seek for something more

THE WINDS OF TIME

140

than the amusements generally associated with city
life. For a capital, Dublin is astonishingly friendly.
From the top floors of the houses in Stephen’s
Green one can see the Wicklow mountains, a fact
which in itself preserves one from the devastating
loneliness which the chinmey-pots of most towns
invariably convey, at any rate, to me. More for-
tunate than any town I know in its surroundings,
in half an hour by train or tram you can be in the
country, among the mountains or by the sea, on
the wild foreland of Howth or on the lonely, sandy
shores of Malahide, Squalid as are so many of the
Dublin streets and slums, the fresh sea air blows up
them with the tide ; while, in the muddy flats,
where the LifFey runs out to the sea, the poorest
gutter child finds chronic amusement searching for
mermaids among the seaweed and the gulls.

For the rest, if the bridges are eyesores and the
quays of an indescribable squalor, in her splendid
buildings and her Georgian squares, what remains
of eighteenth-century Dublin smiles on you and
draws you to her heart, recalling to your memory
her bygone days of extravagant splendour. And
in the inhabitants of Dublin is reflected the surpris-
ing friendliness of their city.

In engaging familiarity, the shop people, instead
of addressing you indefinitely as “ Madam ” or
“ Sir,” call you by your name. “ No grey silk
stockings in stock to-day, Mrs. Mahony,” says the
shop-walker at Switzer’s. “ If you walk upstairs.
Miss Murphy, you’ll find our latest models on
view.”

“ We have some new suitings in. Major, you may
like to see.”

And if you are very young : “ Umbrellas, child
deetfi in the next room through.”

If fiiendly, it must however be admitted that life

IRISH POETS

I4I

in Dublin is not very gay. For one thing there is
very little private entertaining, and there are prac-
tically no restaurants. Somebody once tried to
start a Night Club, but as the only available drink
was cocoa, it did not have a long or hilarious
existence. The various hotels provide indifferent
fare imder high-sounding names, hanche de mouton
a la broche seeking to conceal its identity, on the
printed mem, with the roast mutton with which all
Ireland is so painfully familiar. Only at Jammet’s
is it possible to dine sumptuously ; and if a dinner
once a week or once a month is sufficient nourish-
ment for you, then you may be able to afford it at
Jammet’s. Such luxuries, however, are not for the
people of Dublin, most of whom appear to subsist
on an egg with their tea, and cocoa before going
to bed.

Unlike England, where people are totally incap-
able of expressing themselves on any subject on
which they feel deeply without first dining over it,
at some of the famous “ Dublin evenings ” to which
I was invited the most brilliant conversation was
carried on to an accompaniment of tea and cake :
A. E. (George Russell), poet, artist and mystic, in
the chimney-corner of his house in Rathgar, dis-
coursing on Bolshevism as only he can discourse on
every subject imder the sun ; W. B. Yeats emerging
from his Celtic sleep to explain the mysteries of the
occult to an enthralled, if unconvinc^, audience ;
James Stephens flinging shafts of humour and sar-
casm round him, while handing tea and buns to
the satellites surrounding him in his top-floor flat
in Fitzwilliam Place.

Yeats I had previously met in London at the
Mair’s house in Walpole Street, and he had dined
with us in Cheyne Walk, giving a cachet to the party
by reading out his own poetry in the deep melodious

THE WINDS OF TIME

142

voice which is one of his chief charms. George
Mair, who had married Maire O’Neill, the clever
Abbey Theatre actress, was at that time London
editor of the Manchester Guardian and one of the
most brilliant young men of the day. After dining
with them one night we all went on to Yeats’s flat
near Euston (which he said was the nearest spot
he could find to Ireland in London), where he was
always to be found on Monday evenings. Having
left our wraps on the kitchen dresser on top of the
poet’s breakfast bacon, we were taken to the sitting-
room which was draped with black and' lighted with
seven candles, with incense burning in a bowl on
the mantelpiece. Sipping some strange vintage,
we listened to our host’s enthralling tales of a
scullery-maid who, imder hypnotic influence, had
spoken perfect Greek, and of Levinska, a Polish
medium, who, in a trance, had apparently fastened
Yeats’s pyjamas to the ceiling with a hatpin. After
each story George Mair would teU Yeats he was
the best liar he knew, to which Yeats would reply,
“ Yes, I was afraid you would think that,” and
would then tell another. About one o’clock in the
morning, when we were preparing to go home, he
told us of a man who had called on him and who
was so clever Yeats felt he must be wicked — ^nobody
normal could know so much. “ More and more I
kepjt thinking how wicked he must be, and at last
I knew it, because suddenly I saw a huge green
elephant standing behind him.”

“ I shouldn’t let a little thing like that prejudice
you, Yeats,” said George Mair.

The unreal atmosphere in which they live un-
doubtedly gives to the minds of the Dublin literati
the fiintastic turn which each of them displays
in different degree in their writings. — Or it may
be the tea and buns on which they apparently

JAMES STEPHENS* “ IGNORANCE ” 1 43

subsist. James Stephens, who looks exactly like one
of the leprechauns he so charmingly describes, pos-
sesses the same impish humour attributed to these
typically Irish sprites. One day, he told me, when
his poetry and books were bringing him into the
limelight, a telephone message came from the Vice-
regal Lodge saying that two of the guests staying
there. Lady Randolph Chin-chill and Lady Leslie,
were anxious to make his acquaintance and with
his permission would call on him that morning.
James Stephens, to whom ladies of title were at
that time more or less of an unknown quantity,
awaited their arrival vdth some embarrassment,
having, he said, no idea what to talk to them about.
Lady Leslie, however, soon put him at his ease by
talking of her son Shane Leslie, for whom he had
a great admiration. Eulogizing and criticizing his
work, James Stephens completely ignored the exist-
ence of Lady Randolph, who, no doubt feeling
rather out of it, presently remarked : “I too have
a son, Mr. Stephens.”

“ Oh, have you ? ” he replied with sudden in-
terest ; “ and what is his name ? ”

Lady R. Winston Churchill.

J. S. Oh, that delightful writer of American
novels.

Lady R. My son is not that Winston Churchill.

J. S. Oh, is there another?

Lady R. {coldly). Don’t you read the news-
papers ?

J. S. Never.

Lady R. And you have never heard of my son ?

J. S. {stoutly). Never; but do tell me about him
— what does he do?

Lady R. {vaguely). He is at the Admiralty.

J. S. Ah, that accoimts for my not having heaurd
of him.

THE WINDS OF TIME

144

Both ladies had risen to their feet. James
Stephens saw them down the stairs and into the
Viceregal motor. As they drove away Lady Ran-
dolph put her head out of the window : “ All the
same, Mr. Stephens,” she said, “ you have heard of
my son ! ”

Mrs. J. R. Green, the historian, was another
writer living then in Dublin whom I had known
previously in London. She had a charming house
in Stephen’s Green, where she gave literary parties
which, like her writing, I always found rather
sticky. An uncompromising Nationalist, she had
left London after the execution of Sir Roger Case-
ment. She had moved heaven and earth to save
him and took his fate terribly to heart. She was
a curious woman, with snow-white hair, a mask-
like face and a slow, deliberate manner of speech.
She disliked women, but, though I never made
much headway with her in London, she was very
kind to me in Dublin. I would have liked to know
her better, and asked her later to come and stay
at Ard-na-sidhe. Unfortimately the visit did not
materialize, but she wrote me in reply the following
letter containing an interesting suggestion :

90 Stephen’s Green,

Ap. 8./19.

My dear Lady Gordon,

How charming of you to write me so kind a letter
of farewell. I was afraid you were suffering a good
deal, and I wanted to see you before you left — and
then I too got caught in the cold and could not go
out. I ought to have written to explain.

It touched me to get your considerate letter and
I would have answered before only for fresh buist-
iog pipes !

I dmuld much like to go and see you. I have

DUBLIN LODGINGS

145

never been in Kerry and I really must go there.
In these times one cannot see enough of one’s own
land, and of those who love it. I do hope to see
your house, and your life in it, some day. I am
sure it has good for all in and around it.

I have an instinct that for a long time to come
the old hospitality will have to take another form,
not less noble, of fellowship in all daily things.
There are some things (material !) in the new world
which have to change in the giving and in the
receiving alike — but the main thing, the free inter-
course of all who care for the same ideals, is more
than ever needed. I have been thinking a good
deal about the old forms of English hospitality and
its evils, and the French form with its hard limita-
tions. I wish we could be free enough in soul here
in Ireland to invent a scheme of our own that
would hurt no one, and help a common idealism.

Yom^ very sincerely,

A. S. Green.

In many ways Dublin is an xmcomfortable place
to live in for anyone who is not the fortunate
possessor of a house of their own. The hotels,
with one or two exceptions, are expensive and
badly run. Such furnished houses as are to let
are usually dilapidated, dirty and of unimaginable
gloom. Lodgings are impossible. Flats as they
are known in London and other towns, with die
exception of one solitzuy block, are non-existent.
What are advertised as “ flats ” usually consist of
two rooms in a private house, with the use of a
bathroom and a cupboard on the stairs described
as a “kitchenette,” fitted with a gas-iing and a
sink.

Impelled by vulgar curiosity, I pr^ented myself
one day at the door of a house which, in the

1^6 THE WINDS OF TIME

columns of the/mA advertised in the briefly

descriptive Dublin fashion : “ Flat to let, lady or
gentleman, Protestant, dining out, partial attend-
ance, electric light, telephone.” The address given
was in one of Dublin’s most fashionable squares, and
the house, I discovered as I rang the bell, belonged
to a doctor. The advertisement, one of a hundred
gimilar ones, intrigued me. What was “ partial
attendance ” ? And what were the especial attrac-
tions of a “ Protestant ” lady or gentleman which
seemed to make them so peculiarly desirable to the
owners of houses in a Catholic town, since nearly
every advertisement I saw laid special stress on this
religious qualification?

The entrance hall did not look very inviting. A
glance at the girl who opened the door, and the
time she took to do it, explained why the attend-
ance was described as “ partial.” The doctor’s
wife, who personally conducted me upstairs, scru-
tinized me with a penetrating eye. Conscious of
an imcertain and wavering Protestantism, I hoped
she would not submit me to a searching examina-
tion of the Catechism, or ask for references from the
Church of Ireland as to my adherence to its tenets
in the event of my taking the flat, any chance of
which, however, vanished the moment I saw it.
Lace cmtains hxmg threateningly over the plate-
glass windows — ^which, like most Dublin windows,
had apparently not laeen cleaned since the day
they were first put in — hiding from view the only
asset of the house : the sun shining cheerfully on
the gardens of the square. We explored the bath-
room, which had no hot water laid on, and the
kitdbienette, which had no light. I inquired as to
the attendance, which was to be even more partial
than, in my wildest moments, I had anticipated.

“ You won’t want nauch,” said the Doctor’s wife,

TRAGEDY IN KERRY

147

disposing decisively of any requirements I might be
likely to imagine myself in need of ; “a little dust-
ing Maria could do for you — and of course she’d
wash up your breakfast things, and she would
answer the door and bring in the tea. ... By
the way,” she added, as an afterthought, “ I forgot
to say the sitting-room would of course be wanted
every day from two o’clock till four, for the Doctor’s
patients.”

“ My sitting-room ! ” I gasped.

“Yes,” she replied; “but you wouldn’t mind
just for a short time like that.”

I eyed her severely.

“ I was looking for somewhere to /ioe,” I re-
marked ; “ if I took this flat I should have to
spend most of my time in the street, since I am to
be out every day from two till four, and I am
never to be in for dinner in the evenings. Four
guineas seems an excessive sum for the few hours
of the night and the early morning when I should
be allowed to occupy it.”

“ m make it three guineas if you like,” said the
Doctor’s wife.

But by this time I was on the doorstep. At last
I understood why a religious qualification goes
with the letting of Dublin flats. Not all the con-
solations offered by the Church of Ireland, how-
ever, would ever induce me to take up my residence
in one.

4e 3|c He 4c ;|e

In my absence events had been moving at home.
Kerry had become suddenly famous. A police-
man had been shot (fortunately not fatally). The
Lord-Lieutenant had sent a wire expressing his
indignation at the outrage. The Irish Times, in a
leading article on it, had called (for the twenty-
sixth time that month) on the Government for

THE WINDS OF TIME

148

firm and just administration of the law, A pro-
minent member of the Southern Unionist Alliance
had subjected the Chief Secretary to a searching
cross-examination in the House of Commons on the
state of affairs in Kerry. The Chief Secretary, in
reply, had no information from Kerry or, appar-
ently, from any other part of Ireland. No arrest
had been made. According to the newspapers, a
diligent search for the assailant had so far proved
fruitless. The policeman was sitting up, and public
interest in the affair subsiding, when Killorglin
awoke one morning to find itself proclaimed a
military area.

At no time a centre of much commercial activity,
complete paralysis settled on the town as the result
of the pronouncement. All business came to a
standstill, while the inhabitants, propping them-
selves against the walls of its public-houses, viewed
with a certain nervous apprehension the arrival in
their midst of an armoured car, a tank — commonly
supposed to be full of poison gas — several machine-
guns, and a detachment of soldiers described in the
local paper as “ sated with blood and lust and
victory.”

The blockade of the town having been ensured
by the establishment on its bridges of these various
engines of war, its inhabitants were next informed
that permits from the military authorities would be
required for anybody wishing to enter it,

Killorglin seethed with indignation. That the
liberty of its population should be thus interfered
with was an unspeakable outrage, for which the mere
shooting of a policeman afforded no justification.
As everybody knew, the affair was purely acci-
dental — one of those regrettable incidents to which
only ill-advised policemen would expose them-
selvei. As Mrs. Daly remarked, “ What right have

MRS. DALY

149

the police to be interfering with the people?*’
Mrs. Daly is the mother of fourteen children, “ six
of them buried,” she will tell you with the proud
satisfaction with which the poor in Ireland allude
to their thus providentially disposed-of progeny.
The surviving eight, ranging in age from five to
fourteen, conforming with the spirit of the times,
“ stood to attention ” on my arrival, “ formed
fours,” and were only restrained from shouting
“ Up the rebels ! ” by an admonition from their
mother to “ Whisht, and have conduct.” For Mrs.
Daly, although an extremist in the matter of Sinn
Fein, belongs to a family which for generations has
been what she is pleased to describe as “ rared on
the gentry,” and has not yet lost an inherent respect
for the “ quality ” or a natural disinclination to
offend their susceptibilities.

“ Never yet did I give a foul face where I met
a fair one, whatever way the wind would be blow-
ing,” she remzurked, welcoming me into her cottage,
incidentally sweeping a broody hen off the chair
in which I was requested to seat myself.

Accustomed to Mrs. Daly’s usually inconsequent
conversation, I placed myself on the extreme edge
of the chair, as far removed as possible from the
position lately vacated by the hen, awaiting some
e3q>lanation of the cryptic remark with which I had
been greeted.

“ Whoever it was that sent for them I don’t
know,” said Mrs. Daly ; “ some says as how it was
the Colonel, and more says as how it was the
Canon.”

“ Sent for what ? ” I inquired.

“ The soldiers.”

“ Of course the Colonel didn’t send for them, nor
the Canon,” I replied. “ No private person could
do such a thing. It was the Government that sent

THE WINDS OF TIME

150

t hptn because of the drilling and the raids for arms
and the shooting of Constable Spillane.”

“ Sure he’d never have got shot at all, the
craytur,” replied Mrs. Daly, “ if he’d minded his
own business. What right had he to be up at
Danny Murphy’s at all that time of the night ? ”

“ He was looking for arms,” I replied.

“ Looking for trouble,” Mrs. Daly remarked with
a sniff, “and he found it — and we all foimd it
with the persecution that’s been put on us by the
soldiers.”

“ In what way do they persecute you ? ”

“ Well, now, your ladyship, would you believe
it? There was that little boy Batty,” indicating
her eldest offspring, “ and meself driving into town
yesterday morning, and a sack of turf inside in the
ass-cart, and just on the bridge beyant on the road
were two of them (Scotch by the look of them),
and an officer with a small little’ cap on the side
of his head. ‘ Shtop,’ sez he, holding on to the ass
by the bridle, ‘ where’s your permit ? ’ sez he.
‘ Permit is it,’ sez I, ‘ and what would I be wanting
a permit for, me that’s travelled this road since I
was bom, by nobody’s leave but my own.’ ‘ You
must have one now,’ sez he, ‘ or I’ll shoot you.’
‘ If you shoot me,’ sez I, ‘ I’ll shtiike you.’ With
that they all laughed. ‘ What have you,’ sez he,
‘ in that sack ? ’ ‘ What’s that to you,’ sez I.
‘ Come now,’ sez he, ‘ and open it,’ teiking hold of
the sack ; and as it waisn’t too well tied together
at all, out fell all the turf on the road. ‘ Pick that
up again,’ sez I, ‘ and put it back in the sack.
What right have you interfering with me — a poor
woman that has done no harm to no one ; sure
wasn’t your own mother a woman, and you’d have
a right to remember it,’ With that they all laughed
again. But they picked up the turf and put it back

HAVE conduct!”

I5I

in the sack, ‘ Pass on,’ sez the oflScer, ‘ but don’t
be coining into town again without a permit ’ ;
but sure by that time hadn’t they Batty and me
half-killed with the fright.”

“ Well, if they do nothing worse than that you
won’t die just yet.”

“ They’ll do worse — same as they done before.”

“What’s that?” I inquired.

“ Behead all the people and bum all the houses.”

“ When did they do that ? ”

“ ’Twas some time ago then.”

“ It must have been.”

“ ’Twas in 1641,” said Batty.

“ Hasn’t Batty the learning ? ” remarked his
mother with pride. “ It’s a great scholar I’ll make
of him.”

“ If he isn’t beheaded,” I suggested, preparing to
take my departure.

“ The solders will kill all before them,” replied
Mrs, Daly, relapsing into gloom. “Killorglin is
destroyed entirely, and all along of a bosthoon of a
policeman who had a right to keep to his bed at
night instead of trapesing about in the dark inter-
fering with decent, quiet people who done him no
harm nor anyone else.”

“ Up the ribils ! ” murmured Batty tentatively.

“ Whisht,” said his mother, “ didn’t I tell you
to have conduct.”

CHAPTER XV

BATTLE, MURDER AND SUDDEN DEATH — CHRISTMAS —
A STORY OF THE BLACK AND TANS

T he autumn of 1920 proved a terrible one of
wind and rain, the beginning of what one
felt instinctively would be a grey and dismal winter
of bloody deeds and merciless revenge.

The Government’s attitude to Ireland grew daily
more recklessly vindictive. When, one wondered,
would England ever understand Ireland? Every
measure she adopted invariably had the exact
opposite effect to that which she expected. Like
an angry parent who knows that, eventually, he
will be compelled to give in to the importunities
of his growing family, England blustered furiously
before the inevitable smrrender.

The Nationalist Party went down because, in
its thirty years of existence, it failed to obtain by
constitutional methods the self-government which,
since Parnell’s day, had dangled in tantalizing
fashion before the eyes of Ireland. Disappointed
and irritated, the youth of the country threw its
old leaders aside. Constitutional agitation had
failed ; England could not be cajoled. Over and
over again history has shown that, to wu'est a half-
hearted measure of reform from her, she must
somehow be horrified.

In 1916 Sinn Fein set out to horrify. England
replied with two years of repression. In 1918
there were 1,100 political arrests ; 260 private

158

THE BLACK AND TANS 1 53

houses were raided, innumerable meetings, fairs
and markets were suppressed. In 1919 Ireland
retaliated by shooting 16 policemen, who, having
informed against local offenders, were looked on
as spies and traitors to their country. In order
to avenge their death, 1,400 houses were raided,
950 people were arrested, the Bail was suppressed,
its leading members deported, every Sinn Fein
organization in the country declared illegal ; with
the res\ilt that policemen were murdered in ever-
increasing numbers, more houses raided, and more
arrests made, on any pretext : for speaking in
Irish, for waving green flags, for collecting in the
streets for “ rebel ” prisoners.

Under the monstrous regime of the “ Black and
Tans,” so brutal did political coercion become,
that murder, always Ireland’s last resource, became
inevitable.

It took all one’s time and energy to fight the
pessimism and hopelessness of everybody in the
distracting sitaution.

“ Things cannot go on as they are,” murmured
the less gloomy. But couldn’t they? What was
to prevent them ? So long as England persisted
in her policy of terror, so long would Ireland
“ throw herself about,” murder and reprisal alter-
nating with sickening recmxence.

And the hideous waste of it all, the loss to Ireland
of so many of her ablest sons, like Terence Mac-
Swiney, Lord Mayor of Cork, dying on a hunger
strike, for an ideal which, whether he died or not,
was bound to materialize within the next few years.
Was he a great hero or a misguided idealist?
Wotdd not a man of his xmdoubted worth and
genius have served Ireland better by livii^, instead
of dying, for her?

Opinions differed. An aunt of mine, an un-

THE WINDS OF TIME

154

compromising Unionist, was so struck by the
nobility of his motives that she stopped one day
to eulogize him to an ardent Sinn Fein gardener.

“ Although I do not agree with his politics,” she
remarked, “ I cannot help admiring him ; he must
have been a wonderful man.”

“ Well, now,” said the gardener, “ I think he
was a d d fool.”

9fc :ic af: ;it

Batde and murder and sudden death were
not long arriving in Killorglin : inevitable result
of the advent, in our midst, of a batch of
Black and Tans, brought in to reinforce the
r anks of the R.I.C. which had been depleted by
resignations.

The procedure leading up to these tragic events
was the usual one prevailing in so many Irish
towns at that time.

On a perfectly peaceful district there would
suddenly descend a number of Enghsh, Scotch and
sometimes Irish ex-soldiers, temporarily recruited
for the purpose of terrorizing Ireland ; subject to
no especial training ; their power limited by
neither law nor discipline. The conditions of life
rmder which they lived were not pleasant. Con-
stantly harassed by the I.R.A., they could never
go out on patrol, or leave the vicinity of their
barracks, without laying themselves open to the
risk of attack.

Shunned by everybody on principle, any effort
to make themselves agreeable was met with relent-
less vengeance by the enemy. In Killorglin, as
in many other places, the advances of the young
men, -who were well set up, and of more or less
{deasing appearance, were at first not altogether
unwelcome to certain young women in the town.

BAD TO WORSE

155

Having been seen in the company of the Black
and Tans, their houses were forcibly entered one
night by the I.R.A. and their hair cut off. Indig-
nant at the insult paid to their newly acquired
friends, the Black and Tans raided the Sinn Fein
Club, damaged the billiard table and burnt the
Republican Flag in the middle of the Square.

A few nights later, two Black and Tans, unarmed
and in mufti, about to start on leave, were shot
dead not far from the Barracks, on their way from
seeing two girls home.

When, at midnight, their bodies were foimd and
brought into the Barracks, their comrades rushed
wildly into the town, pulled one of the leading
traders out of his bed, into the street, where they
shot him, burnt the Creamery and the Saw-mills
(the property of almost the orily Protestant in the
town), looted the public-houses of whisky, and,
firing indiscriminately in every direction, gave the
terrified inhabitants so many hours to leave the
town before they set it on fire.

On the following day, refugees poured out into
the coimtry. When darkness fell, only three men
remained in possession of their homes. All through
the mght they sat waiting for the flames to rise,
for the shots to burst forth.

Nothing, however, happened. Wiser counsels,
from a member of an older and more disdplined
force, the R.I,C., prevailed. The day of vengeance
was postponed.

Passing from bad to worse, the winter crept
on.

The murder, in cold-blooded ferocity, of the
English officers in Dublin ; of Mrs. Lindsay ; of
the Auxiliaries at Macroom, plunged all Ireland
in gloom. Every day the tale of horror grew,
eafch side vying with titie other in deeds of ruthless

THE WINDS OF TIME

156

vengeance, every act of oppression by the forces
of the Grown being met with increasing violence
and crime on the part of the phantom Republican
Army, ever eluding pursuit and capture.

Christmas came, and instead of peace and good-
will we had a terror in the country unparalleled
in the history of our times, making a mockery even
of the feeble festivities of the “ Wren boys,” who,
divested of their trench coats and revolvers, and
adorned with sashes and streamers of coloured
ribbon, appeared as usual on St. Stephen’s Day,
somewhat sheepishly dancing in front of the house,
swinging the body of a dead wren to the
monotonous refrain :

“ The wren, the wren is the king of all birds.

On St. Stephen’s Day he got caught in the furze.
Although he’s small, his family is great,

Kind madam, come down and give us a treat,”

A performance without which Christmas in Kerry
would not be considered complete ; and which is
followed, on St. Brigid’s Eve, by a visit from the
“ Biddy boys,” whose pleasantries are met with
wild shrieks from the kitchen.

Otherwise, with the exception of the lighting of
the Christmas candle, left burning in the window
of every house and cottage in Kerry to welcome
the Son of Man, in the event of his returning again
to earth, the festival passed, with fear and distrust
instead of peace and goodwill in the hearts of
all. Nobody was happy. Nobody went to sleep
who did not start up at the soimd of a knock or a
footstep outside. So poisoned was the atmosphere
with suspicion, so great the terror of being over-
heard, and eventually burnt out or shot, that
nobody made a statement or expressed an opinion
in public or even in private, for, as. an old man

THE CARLTONS I 57

whispered to me in confidence, “ Your own son
might be in it, and you not know.”

lie :|e ^ 3|;

The one bright spot for me in the New Year
was the fate which befell one of my most aggressively
Unionist acquaintances.

Mrs. Carlton comes from the North. Her name,
as a matter of feet, is not Carlton, but for obvious
reasons I am unable to give her real one.

In early youth she made, as so many of us do,
an iU-advised marriage. In her case the fatal
step was political. She married into the South
— an experiment in eugenics often recommended
for the salvation of Ireland, which did not, how-
ever, in this case result in the salvation of either
Mr. or Mrs. Carlton.

Ever since her marriage, twenty years before,
Mrs. Carlton’s life at Castle Carlton was a con-
tinual protest, against the climate, the people and
“ the state of the country.”

“ If it weren’t for the Black and Tans,” she was
fond of asserting, “ no decent person could live in
it.”

Her admiration for the Auxiliary forces of the
Crown amounted to positive passion. “ The dar-
lings ! ” I have heard her exclaim, as they crashed
in motor-lorries down the narrow roads, firing
wildly at the terror-stricken inhabitants fleeing for
life across the fields. In Dublin, where she took
a house for the winter, their activities used to fill
her with admiration. Castle Carlton having been
twice raided by armed and masked Sinn Feiners,
she dwelt, witii all the rapture of satisfied ven-
geance, on the sleepless nights and harassed exist-
ence of the “ rebels ” xmder military rule ; while
every time a shot rang out in the stillness of the

1^8 THE WINDS OF TIME

hour after Curfew, she smiled at the thought of
another Sinn Feiner gone to his doom, dismissing
with indignation Mr. Carlton’s suggestion that the
Black and Tans were merely keeping their hands
in by shooting cats.

Mr. Carlton never approved of the winter in
Dublin. For generations his family had faced
agitations of every description in the South, un-
moved and unmolested. Like most Irish landlords,
he loves, while he curses, his native land. He has
never lived anywhere else and he dislikes being
uprooted. For thirty years he has fished and shot
and leant against a gate, looking into a field — an
occupation he calls farming. It is a life which
suits him admirably, and though he was certainly
irritated when the Sinn Feiners raided his guns,
it did not seem to him an adequate reason for
pvr.hangin g the habits of a lifetime for a monot-
onous existence in the Kildare Street Club.

However, even Dublin was better than Ulster,
which was the only alternative of which Mrs.
Carlton would hear ; and, having settled her into
the house which they had taken in Fitzwilliam
Place, Mr. Carlton iWself returned, at the first
opportunity, to Castle Carlton, on “ urgent
business.” In his absence, he arranged for his
nephew, Denis, to come up for a few days and
keep his wife company.

Mrs. Carlton did not like Denis any better than
she liked 2inybody else in the South. But though
she considered him idle and extravagant, and sus-
pected him of “ pro-Irish ” sympathies, he was a
man : and as she belongs to a type which looks
upon a man of any kind in the house as a protection
in times of upheaval, she agreed to put up with
him.

It did not, however, look as if Denis was going

A DREADFUL MISTAKE

159

to be much company, still less protection to her,
on the first night of his stay. About seven o’clock
he arrived, and, after less than two minutes’ con-
versation, he rushed out to dinner ; and in spite
of his aunt’s strict injunctions to be in by ten o’clock
— Curfew hour — he had not returned at half-past
eleven. Mrs. Carlton sent the servants to bed.
She had finished the Morning Post, which she de-
lighted in for its intelligent grasp on all matters
connected with Sinn Fein, Bolshevism and the
Jews. The fire was burning itself out in the
drawing-room grate, and she was just meditating
on the attractions of bed, when a violent knock
resounded on the front door.

Mrs. Carlton ran down the stairs and opened
the door. But instead of her nephew, a taU and
powerfully built stranger, in a mackintosh, with a
soft hat pulled down over his face, pushed past
her into the hall.

“ For God’s sake, let me in,” he gasped ; “ the
Black and Tans are outside.”

“ Certainly not,” said Mrs. Carlton. “ Go out
at once,” pushing him towards the door.

“ Don’t be so hard on a fellow,” said the stranger.
“ I tell you they’re just outside — ^at the comer of
the street. They’ll arrest me.”

“ I hx}pe they will,” said Mrs. Carlton, scenting
a “ rebel,” if not an escaped murderer. “ I’ll tell
them to,” she added, rushing down the steps to
the military lorry a few yards away, falling head-
long in the dark into the arms of a khaki-clad figure.

“ Come to my house ! ” she exclaimed breath-
lessly, dragging him by the arm.

“ Not to-night, ducky,” said the Black and Tan
with a grin. “ S’m other evening, perhaps,” he
added encouragingly, endeavouring to loosen him-
self firom her frenzied grasp.

THE WINDS OF TIME

i6o

“ Chuck her in ! ” shouted a voice from the
lorry.

“ How dare you ? ” screamed Mrs. Carlton,
fin din g herself dragged between two new-comers
on to the step.

“ ’Urry up there ! ” shouted a voice. “ Ain’t
going to stop here all the bloomin’ night, are we ? ”

A frightful heave, and Mrs. Carlton found herself
hurled on to the seat, as the lorry plunged forth
into the darkness past her house, the door of which,
she perceived with horror by the light of the lamp,
was tightly shut.

“This is all a dreadful mistake,” she began.
A revolver placed against her cheek cut short the
explanation she was about to make. She looked
around helplessly. In addition to the dozen or so
Black and Tans, she perceived only one other
prisoner — a boy of about sixteen, with what she
was in the habit of describing as a “ rebellious
face.” Even more terrified than herself, he was
making a wild effort to jump out. A blow on the
head from the butt-end of a rifle stretched him
unconscious at her feet.

A moment later the revolver against her cheek
was withdrawn — a shot rang out — a piercing scream
rent the air. Under a lamp-post a small black
object wriggled in its last convulsive death agony.
So it was cats, Mrs. Carlton realized, with a squirm
of terror. Cats were her only weakness,

“ I must protest ” she began. The click of

the revolver against her cheek, the glint of a bayonet
against her knees, and Mrs. Carlton slid helplessly
into imconsciousness at the feet of her captors.

When she awoke she found herself in a white-
washed ceU lying on a plank, a spotty-faced wardress
endeavouring to restore the circulation to her
frozen limbs.

LOITERING ! ”

l6l

“ Where am I ? ” she murmured.

“ In the Bridewell, dearie.”

Mrs. Carlton faded away once more into the
realms of unconsciousness.

% afe

The longest night God ever made at last broke
to dawn. But it was past midday when, after a
meal of watery cocoa and musty bread, Victoria
Carlton (age forty-two), wife of Valentine Carlton,
of Castle Carlton and lOO Fitzwilliam Place, found
herself in the presence of a police magistrate,
listening to the charge against her of loitering in
the streets of Dublin after Curfew.

“ Loitering ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Carlton. “ I was
running”

“ Five shillings,” said the magistrate.

“ I must explain said Mbs. Carlton.

“ Five shillings,” snapped the magistrate ; “ and
if she hasn’t it on her,” he added to the inspector,
looking unsympathetically at Mrs. Carlton’s black
lace evening-gown, hanging in ribbons round her,
“ send a constable home with her in a cab to fetch
it. Next case, Sergeant.”

4: afe ^ 3ie

I had the story from her nephew.

CHAPTER XVI

THE NEW HYGIENE — ^BRIDGET MARY AND MARY
BRIDGET — T TTF. BLEEDING STATUE OF TEMPLEMORE

I N no country in the world is it possible to talk
so much and to make so little impression as in
Irdand. As promoter and president of the local
branch of the Women’s National Health Association
I all but lost my own lungs in my efforts to save
those of my neighbours from the onslaughts of
tuberculosis.

Nothing, however, that I could say on the ques-
tion of hygiene had any effect, for the reason that
nobody in Kerry believes in anything but tradition
in such matters. Being myself easily discouraged,
I have all the more admiration for people who
persist in a new doctrine in Ireland. It is related
of Sir Horace Plunkett that he addressed fifty
meetings before a single society resulted from his
efforts to organize Irish agricultural life on the
basis of co-operation. In the end he won, not only
against apathy but against the violent opposition
of politicians and press. Equally to be admired
was Lady Aberdeen, who, instead of devoting
herself, as Vicereine, to the entertainment of
Dublin, organized the women of Ireland into
associations for fighting consumption : a plague
which was decimating the population almost as
much in the country districts as in the towns.

Owing to her imconquerable determination,
branch^ sprang up in every county. Some suc-

162

REFORM IN THE AIR

163

ceeded beyond expectation, others failed — ours
among them. It may have been my faults
Fanatical conviction is, I believe, one of the first
qualifications of a leader, and in my inmost heart
I never could feel convinced of the benefit of being
cured of consumption in order that you may ulti-
mately die of cancer, which, according to statistics,
is what usually happens, since, as soon as one
disease decreases, another increases, and anyway
“ we’ve got to die of something,” as the Secretary
lugubriously remarked.

However, the Branch was started with intense
enthusiasm and the whole neighbourhood flocked
to the inaugural meeting addressed by Lady
Aberdeen, who came down especially from Dublin
for the purpose. The priest and the parson and
the Nationalist M.P., the Rural Councillors and
the leading magnates assembled on the platform ;
Her Excellency opened the proceedings with a
speech on tuberculosis which, if it mystified some
of the audience, undoubtedly impressed the rest.
The spirit of Reform filled the hall. There was
literally nothing we did not imdertake to cany
through, from the sweeping of the streets to the
establishment of a District Nurse and a Babies’
Club. Promises of subscriptions, offers of help
poured in. Not a creature in the hall but was
carried away on the irresistible tide of enthusiasm
produced by the prospect of the New Hygiene.

No crusade was ever started with more resolute
determination. For a whole year the Committee,
impartially recruited from Catholics and Protest-
ants, from coimtry and fi'om townspeople, met
every month. There were no lack of problems to
tackle. Killorglin is a town of 1,300 inhabitants.
In one of its principal streets there are no sanitary
arrangements whatever. In another, several houses

THE WINDS OF TIME

164

have large back yards to which there is no access
save through the houses themselves : cows, ponies
and donkeys being led through the living-room and
the shop from the stables to the street. There were
no dustbins or receptacles of any kind for the
rubbish, the owners of the shops . throwing rabbit
skins, potato parings, bones, papers and filth of
every description out of their front door into the
street, where it lay for days in heaps, scratched
up by dogs and blown by the wind, until such time
as the local contractor found it convenient to
remove it. Tuberculosis was rife ; outbreaks of
typhoid occurred from time to time. In one
house, where we heard of a case, the victim had
been complaining for some time of a damp spot
in her kitchen wall, subsequently discovered to
be caused by a leak from the town drain which
went under the floor — almost, if not quite, equal
to the sanitary condition of a neighbouring town,
where the open main drain of the town still flows,
I believe, ti^ough the Infirmary yard.

For a whole year we drew up resolutions and
wrote letters to the Local Government Board, the
Congested Districts Board and to every other Board
and Council in Ireland, making ourselves , thor-
oughly objectionable to them all. Nobody, how-
ever, pgiid any attention to our appeals, with the
exception of the Roman Catholic Bishop, who
lamented, in a letter to the Cork Examiner, that we
should have thought it necessary to ask for an in-
quiry over the death, from typhoid, of three patients
in the KiUamey Infirmary ; and the local curate,
who sarcastically remarked of the Killorglin
Women’s National Health Committee that “ not
half of them had their own necks washed.”

The interest in what was known usually as
“ tubergoloshes ” died down.

INFANT WELFARE

165

Gradually the flame of the New Hygiene began
to burn low. One by one the younger members
of the Committee, recruited from the town, faded
away. As they had never been particularly help-
ful, except at jumble sales, they were not greatly
missed. When the War came and we burst out in
Red Cross lectures and First Aid classes, some of
them reappeared. The spirit of Hygiene seemed
fanned once more into flame. Eventually it
dawned on us that the bellows responsible for the
rekindling was not enthusiasm for Belgium : still
less for England. Somehow, in some inexplicable
manner, we seemed to have become involved in
the meshes of the Cumann-m-mBan. Personally,
so long as the young women of the neighbourhood
learnt the principles of nursing, or of anything
that would keep them from strolling aimlessly,
by day and night, up and down the town, I did
not mind whether they subsequently bandaged
“ Tommies ” or Irish Volunteers. But the feelings
of some of the Unionist members of the Committee
were outraged, and they left. Eventually the
doctor said he was too busy to continue with the
classes, and they lapsed.

For two or three years, what was left of us
struggled on, fighting tuberculosis and tradition.
We even embarked on an Infant Welfare Centre.
The Congested Districts Board lent us a field, and
on fine mornings the babies of the town were
collected in a perambulator, by a woman engaged
for the ptupose, deposited on the grass and en-
couraged with milk and sweets and toys to play
in the open air.

But, after a' time, the question of social precedence
brought the Infant Welfare Centre to grief. In
its ignorance of local etiquette, the Committee
had not realized that, in every Irish town, are as

i66

THE WINDS OF TIME

many classes as there are castes in India. Where
the O’Sullivans went was no place for the Miss
O’Malleys ; while a Murphy from the Lane, who
had a lump on its head, was suspected of having
given a deadly disease to no less than three youthful
MacCarties, who lived in the more exclusive
square. In a place “where you’d never know
who you’d be mixing with,” anything might
happen ; and when the District Nurse, who visited
the playground twice a week, suggested weighing
the babies, the coup de grdce was given to the centre.
Every mother withdrew her offspring in indig-
nation. “ Was anything ever more likely to bring
ill luck on a child ? ” they protested. In vain
we assmed them it was the usual custom in every
Babies’ Club and Infant Welfare Centre in the
world. Nobody would hear of it. No child could
be expected to survive such a flouting of Providence
as being put in a weighing scale. In her anxiety
to insure the “ luck ” of a child, no self-respecting
mother will even allow it to be washed for ten days
after birth, a ring of dirt on the head of a new-born
baby, called a “ cradle cap,” being considered of
especial importance in its future welfare. In the
mountainy districts of Iveragh, where the fairies
take an active and jealous interest in the arrival
of new-born babies, the most elaborate precautions
are taken at confinements. To facilitate the arrival
of the child into the world, the wedding ring of
the prospective mother is removed, the clock
stopped, every cupboard and box opened. When
the latter contains money it is not always an easy
matter to prevail upon the man of the house to
unlock it. In such instances, .when reluctantly
persuaded, perhaps by the exigencies of a protracted
delivery, to do so, he will sit for hours with his eye
glued to the box, while, at the sound of the first

THE BLEEDING STATUE 1 67

scream from the baby, he will hastily lock it again.
Since the fairies are fond of stealing new-born
infants, the entire household sits up with it all
night, from the moment of its birth until after the
christening. In one case I have known, where
considerable danger of intervention was anticipated,
nobody went to bed or undressed for a whole
month.

Sometimes it is the mother who is taken, or
“ swept.” The District Nurse, “ so great in her-
self” with the New Hygiene, may diagnose “ sep-
sis,” but the old women — those terrible, amazing
old women, without whom no birth or death is
possible in a Kerry cottage — ^know that she has
been carried away by the Sidhe and that, since
the corpse they are “ waking ” is not really hers,
but that of somebody substituted for her, she will
eventually return to her husband and her home
from the Fairy Rath to which she has temporarily
been borne.

In the circumstances, the hopelessness of attempt-
ing to interfere in the sacred traditions of birth-rites
and customs became apparent. Three nurses in
turn having given us notice, the two remaining
members of the Committee, the Secretary and
myself, came at last imanimously to the melancholy
conclusion that, since nothing we said would ever
make any impression on KiUorglin, we might as
well cease from our efforts and close the Branch.

The incredulity with which otu: suggestions in the
cause of Health were met was all the more humili-
ating in the face of the blind acceptance by the
inhabitants of Keny of the most fantastic claims
by the Church, the most startling of w;hich were
the miraculous cures effected by the bleeding
statue of the Virgin at Templemore, with which
all Ireland was ringing in 1921.

THE WINDS OF TIME

1 68

Professor Haldane, in The Inequality of Man,
gives an interesting account of the strange ejffect
of a certain bacillus which produces red patches
exactly like blood on bread, and which, as lbe
“ bleeding Host,” was used in the past in proof
of the doctrine of Transubstantiation and was
responsible in the Middle Ages for the wholesale
torture and massacre of unbelievers. He also
describes the effect of red ochre on human bones
and tells of the discovery of the skeletons of two
gigantic paleolithic men found near Milan and
claimed by St. Ambrose in the fourth century as
the remains of early Christian martyrs, and who,
under the names of St. Gervaise and St. Protasus,
effected the most miraculous cures.

The “ bleeding ” statue at Templemore was no
doubt equally capable of scientific explanation,
but, since no subject is more frowned upon in
Ireland than Science, it did not occur to anybody
to investigate the cause of this strange occurrence,
which was accepted by the Catholic population
with the same unquestioning belief which dis-
tinguished the Middle Ages (an era in which
Ireland stiU largely lives to-day).

The remarkable discoveries and developments
of Science in the last fifty years had certainly not
been made manifest to Bridget Mary, who had
been crippled for years with sciatica, or to her
niece, Mary Bridget, who had suffered since infancy
from fits, and who lived together, not far from me,
in a whitewashed cottage on the edge of a cliff,
against which the tempestuous waves of the Atlantic
have hurled themselves with varying violence for
untold thousands of years. Something of the
endurance of the rock seemed to have entered into
the souls of Bridget Mary and Mary Bridget. It
never occurred to either of them to repine at thdr

CURES

169

fate or to invoke medical aid in order to mitigate
their sufferings, which they apathetically accepted
as the will of God.

It was Michael Quinlan, I gathered, who first
suggested the possibility of a cxire. He himself
was a martyr to lumbago and had some difficulty
in negotiating the rocky “ bohereen ” which separ-
ated his cottage from that of his neighbours.

Seated in front of their smoky turf fire, I found
him one day reading out from a much-worn copy
of the Irish Independent an account of the miraculous
cures effected at Templemore.

“ I am asking Mary Bridget would she like to
be cured,” he explained, as I seated myself among
the neighbours assembled in the kitchen.

“ I dunno,” replied the epileptic doubtfully ;
dimly conscious, at the back of her somewhat vacant
mind, of the kudos achieved for her by her fits in a
place where, indeed, they proved almost the only
soiirce of excitement to her and her neighbours.
But her aunt was emphatic. She had lived longer
than her niece in Kerry and was therefore better
able to realize the social effect which a miracle
would produce.

After an excited discussion in which we all took
part, it was finally decided that the two women,
with Michael Quinlan and the Widow Clancy,
who, since the death of her husband, had been
subject to a “ weakness ” and whose baby’s feet
turned in, should all make a pilgrimage to Temple-
more.

Owing to a difference of opinion between the
engine-driver and the military occupiers of the
country, there had been no trains in Kerry for
over a month. There was, therefore, obviously
nothing for it but to hire Sweeney’s motor-car for
the occasion ; Michael Qpinlan, who had been

THE WINDS OF TIME

170

profiteering in pigs to an almost incredible extent,
making himself responsible for the larger share of
the expense.

The whole countryside, including myself, as-
sembled to see the start. Sweeney’s motor (which
arrived an hour late) was not a conveyance to
inspire anyone who did not possess an implicit
belief in a Divine Providence with any feeling of
confidence. Having long ago parted with any
superfluous nuts and screws and springs, as it leapt
wildly over the holes and ruts of the “ contract ”
road the feeling of intense grandeur with which
the party had started gradually gave way, I gather,
to one of acute misery.

“ Motoring is a flight,” remarked Bridget Mary,
who subsequently gave me the following graphic
description of the expedition.

“ The cold of the world is between me shoulders,”
said the Widow Clancy.

It was soon after leaving Limerick, she related,
that, as the car swung round a sharp corner, the
challenge rang out and the car came abruptly to a
standstill in flront of a military barricade across
the road.

A sentry in khaki, armed with a rifle and a
bayonet presented at the charge, demanded the
permit of the driver. In the excitement of the
moment, Patsy Shea, who had two permits, a
Government one and a Sinn Fein one, produced
the latter out of the wrong pocket ; whereupon the
sentry called out the guard, and some fifty soldiers,
armed to the teeth, surrounding the car, ordered
the driver to be searched.

The Widow Clancy fainted away. The baby
slid firom her lap to the bottom of the car. Mary
Bridget was in two minds whether to “ throw a
fit” or not, but, deciding that the audience did

CONFUSIONS 1 71

not look sufficiently sympathetic, uttered, instead,
a succession of piercing screams.

Bridget Mary took command of the situation.

“ It won’t surely take all of yez to kill us ; for
God’s saike somebody hold the baby ! ” she shrieked,
throwing it into the arms of the N.G.O., “ and
some of you bloody murderers get a sup of whisky
for the Widow Clancy before she dies on us.”

The N.C.O., completely overpowered by the
screaming infant, collapsed into the ditch. A
lance-corporal fled down the road into a public-
house in search of the whisky, while Bridget Mary
held the prostrate form of her companion in her
arms.

Meanwhile Patsy Shea was endeavouring to
make the best of an unfortunate situation.

“ What is this ? ” inquired the leader of the
searching party, holding up in his hand a police-
man’s baton extracted from Patsy’s pocket.

“Just a bit of a shtick,” replied Patsy, who, a
motor-driver by day, followed by night the calling
of a Sinn Fein policeman.

“ And how did these come into your possession ? ”
holding up a number of cartridges.

“ I couldn’t say,” said Patsy, “ unless you put them
there yourself. They don’t belong to me at all,”
he expostulated as he was led away under arrest,

“ You will have to get out of the car,” said the
sergeant to the occupants.

“ Don’t be talking,” said Bridget Mary ; “ don’t
you see we can’t shtir, being cripples on our way
to Templemore to be cured by the bleeding statue
of the Virgin Mary ? ”

The sergeant, whose orders were to detain aU
suspicious motors and to place their occupants
under arrest, finding the situation not covered by
Field Service Regulations, Part I, was nonplussed.

THE WINDS OF TIME

lyz

A Presbyterian from Lancashire, more than ever
did he curse the fate which had sent him on such
a mission in a “ heathen ” land. He scratched his
head and went for his superior officer.

Eventually, after many searching cross-exam-
inations, it was decided to detain the car-driver
only, the pilgrims being transferred to another
motor and allowed to proceed to Templemore.

By this time the September day was drawing to
its close. It was midnight before the scene of the
pilgrimage was reached. Every hotel and lodging
was full. Huddled together in the motor, the
cripples slept fitfully on the roadside. Early in the
morning, one by one, they were carried or assisted
to the shrine containing the miraculous statue.

He He ^ He

Some days later Bridget Mary was to be seen
hobbling on two sticks down the “ bohereen ” past
Michael Quinlan’s cottage, Mary Bridget wal^g
in sprightly fashion beside her, her formerly vacant
expression replaced by one of intense radiance.

From the little window at the end of the room
where I was sitting with the bed-ridden Michael,
graphically relating his experiences, we could see
them. So far as he was concerned, the expedition
had not been a success. In addition to having to
pay for two motor-cars (fifteen pounds in all),
the ejqposure to the night air and the shock caused
by the military ambush had resulted in considerably
aggravating the lumbago from which he had been
suffering. The local doctor (at the cost of another
pound) had held out litde hope of recovery.

“ Lhe Blessed Virgin,” he remarked resentfully,
as he watched Bridget Maryland Mary Bridget pro-
ceeding on their way, “ is a wonder for legs and
fits, but she’s no damn good for a back at all ! ”

CHAPTER XVII

RAILWAYS — REPRISALS AND RAIDS — THE GENTRY AND
THE SOUL OF IRELAND — ^THE TRUCE

W E never appreciate our blessings until we
have lost them, and nobody ever had any
idea what a wonderful affair the Farranfore-
Cahirciveen railway was until it was closed down.
Before the proclaiming of the Irish Republic it
was one of those branch lines, only met with
in Ireland, which lead nowhere in particular,
which have few passengers, even less traffic and no
history. But since that epoch-making event, it
became the scene of one startling occurrence after
another.

First, there was the episode of the wagon of
ammunition consigned to the military camp at
Glenbeigh. According to the stationmaster’s evi-
dence, he had been forcibly seized and locked
into ffie booking office at Farranfore, while the
wagon was removed from the siding by armed
men, who pushed it for some distance up the Kne,
where, denuded of its contents, it was subsequently
nm into by the next morning’s mail, with disastrous
results to both.

After that, it became a popular pastime with the
bright and enterprising youth of the neighbour-
hood to raid the train. On three separate occasions
the engine was boarded and the mails abstracted
at the point of the revolver. Whereupon the
military rulers of Irdand decreed that an armed

m

THE WINDS OF TIME

174

guard should, in future, walk along the line beside
the train. Wiile this procedure in no way inter-
fered with the normal rate of progress of the
Cahirciveen “ Luxe,” as a military achievement it
could not be considered altogether a success ; as, on
the third morning, the military guard fell into an am-
bush. Several shots were fired from behind a hedge,
two soldiers were woimded, and the rest, casting
away their rifles, fled precipitately over the fields.

The competent Military Authority, having come
to the end of his resources and of his intelligence,
ordered the closing of the line. Under ordinary
circumstances, as a reprisal, this would have
entailed little hardship on the community in
general ; but the Black and Tans having previously
deprived us of our motors, and the Sinn Feiners
having blown up the bridges and rendered the
roads impassable with trenches, the result was that
we were doomed to live in complete isolation,
without letters or newspapers, unable to com-
municate with the outer world, save by telegram ;
dependent, for our food, on local donkey-carts and
an occasional horse and car, which, at exorbitant
cost, conveyed supplies over the fields and through
the rivers between Killamey and Cahirciveen.

If the object of the authorities was to starve us,
they were not successful ; for no sooner did the
Black and Tans prohibit the holding of a market
in one town, than it was immediately held in
another : and if they threw baskets of eggs about
the streets and chased the country vendors out
of the town at the point of the bayonet, as they did
in Killorglin, it was only natural that other means
would eventually be found for the disposing of
agricultural supplies.

Me^while, under the usual policy of reprisal, each
side vied with the other in destruction and revenge.

THE PITY OF IT I

175

The procedure was always the same.

An I.R.A. was arrested.

Reprisal — Two Black and Tans were shot.

Government reprisal — Four (rebel) cottages
burnt.

Sinn Fein reprisal — Four loyalist houses burnt.

And so it went on, neither side having anything
to its credit ; with every act of retaliation, the
bill for compensation mounting higher and higher,
with mutual fear and hatred waxing ever stronger.

If it was a war, then surely it was the most
ignoble ever waged between two supposedly
civilized nations. But England never recognized
it as such ; and indeed it would be difficult to
describe as “ war ” a struggle in which neither side
ever met, or tried to meet, in battle, and in
which one side (the British) was always at a dis-
advantage, because for ever pitted against an
invisible enemy.

Looked at from an impartial point of view, if
such an outlook is at all possible in Ireland, it is
difficult to see what other form of warfare Ireland,
with her lack of artillery and modem instmments
of destruction, could have pursued. Since the
British Empire could devise no more intelligent
form of conquest than was. to be found in the
methods of the Black and Tans, it succeeded ;
and her methods, dark and hideous as they were,
were justified.

As it was, murders and ambushes conducted
by the I.R.A. became invested in the hearts of the
people in Ireland with the same imperishable
glory distinguishing the feats of the Allies in the
battles of the Somme and the Mame : equally
proud tales of the " boys ” being related round
the cabin fires of Kerry as were told in English
vilh^es, durii^ the War, of soldier heroes in the

THE WINDS OF TIME

176

treiich.es of Flanders. That only by such deeds of
horror could Ireland hope to establish her claim
to independence must always be to the discredit
of England, from whom each grudging act of
political justice has always been wrested by murder
and outrage. On the other hand, in Ireland are
too many sinister aspects for one to apportion all
the blame to England. If the English are not so
evil, the Irish are not quite so holy as they imagine
themselves to be. Let us admit that Ireland,
with her religious anaemia ; her refusal to respond
to progress ; her endless suspiciousness ; her
empty rhetoric and petty limitations, underneath
which, to a great extent, her fine ideals and her
spiritual grace are hidden, must be an irritating
neighbour to England, whose large views and hard
common sense, combined with her talent for com-
promise, have resulted in a rich and amplified life of
successfiil enterprise in which Ireland is her only
failure. Alternatively oppressing and propitiat-
ing us, unlike the generality of her enemies, for cen-
turies she has been unable either to kill or cure us.
Constitutionally rniited, spiritually and mentally
the two countries are poles apart. The Union
could no longer be maintained. Once Ireland had
awakened out of the twilight sleep in which the
Gaelic League brought painlessly forth the new
conception of Irish Nationality, the political domin-
ation of England was doomed. Whether we lived
or whether we perished our destiny, one realized,
was in the hands of Sinn Fein.

One night in June all our boats were taken.
It was a wonderful, still, moonlight night, and I
was awakened about 2 a.m. with the noise of
tramping feet. Looking out of the window I saw

THE INFINITE

177

lights and heard men’s voices down by the boat-
house. Suspecting some deed of darkness, but
being powerless to avert it, I returned to bed.
Later, as the day began to break, I looked again
and, in the misty dawn, saw a long procession of
boats, nineteen in all, being rowed in single file
up the lake, in the direction of Lickeen, G.H.Q,
of the local I.R.A., where, it was rumoured, several
hundred men “ on the run ” were encamped. An
ideal spot for the purpose, rendered doubly safe
by this their latest enterprise, since they could
not be approached either by water or land ; every
road leading to their mountain fastness having
been long ago rendered impassable by means of
gaping trenches, twenty feet wide and ten feet
deep, and blocked with boulders rolled from the
roc% heights above.

Every means of locomotion — trains, motors,
bicycles and boats — Shaving been taken, the only
occupation left us was the Contemplation of the
Infinite from the depths of a garden chair. For-
tunately, the weather lent itself to this mystic
pursuit — the days were perfect, windless, cloudless.
Since I could not be on the Lake, I lay on the
heathery bank beside it, listening to the lapping
of the water : the only soimd in a strangely silent
world, unbroken by a distant railway whistle or
motor-hom ; gazing at the misty mountains rising,
beyond the wooded slopes, on the farther shore,
“ squandering,” with Rabindranath Tagore, “ the
days in futile song.”

If you would be idle and sit listless and let your pitcher float
on the wata:,

Conae, oh, come to my lake.

The grassy slope is green and the wild flowers beyond
number —

Your veil will drop to your feet.

THE WINDS OF TIME

178

Come, oh, come to my lake if you must sit idle —

If you would leave off your play and dive in the water.
Come, oh, come to my lake.

Let your blue mantle lie on the shore, the blue water will
cover and hide you.

The waves will stand on tiptoe to kiss your neck and whisper
in yom ears.

Come, oh, come to my lake if you would dive in the water.
If you must be mad and leap to your death, come, oh, come
to my lake.

It is cool and fathomlessly deep.

It is dark like a stream that is dreamless.

There in its depths nights and days are one and songs are
silence.

Come, oh, come to my lake if you would plunge to your death.

Life, SO impossible in the circumstances, became
more than ever a mystery it seemed idle to ques-
tion. Better, I felt, to accept it and to pass on,
clinging to the beauty we could still make our own
on summer days.

To compensate for the dullness of our days, our
nights grew hectic. Every house on the Lake was

raided. Nobody went to bed, except L , who

was staying in the house, and myself, and even we
could hardly call going to bed a performance which
consisted mainly in hanging, in omr dressing-gowns,
out of our bedroom windows, instead of sitting
up, like other Christians, in our clothes in the
drawing-room.

Our turn was bound to come, and I am thankful
to say it took place at an hour when we were still
up and suitably attired.

We were contemplating bed, when I said I heard
the tramp of feet.

“ Nonsense,” said L . “ It’s the wind.”

I pointed out that there was no wind.

“ It’s getting up,” she replied, advancing to the
pianola, into which she proceeded to fix a roll.

A MILITARY VISIT

179

As she seated herself and planted her feet on the
pedalsj a fox-trot broke out upon the roidipght air.

In the course of its less distressingly blatant
refrains, I heard a knocking at the glass door out-
side the drawing-room, leading to the terrace.

“ For goodness’ sake,” I besought her, “ L ,

stop that infernal noise.”

L thumped on, imheeding.

A terrific rattle of glass.

I went out and opened the door.

A gigantic creature in the semi-uniform of the
I.R.A., astonishingly good-looking, with a small
black moustache, stepped lightly inside, while the
clatter of rifles, and the glint of revolvers in his rear,
pointed to a following prepared for death or victory.

“ We are sorry to disturb you,” said Adonis, in a
soft, seductive voice, “ but we want the battery of
your car.”

I breathed again. The car did not belong to
me but to L — — . Necessity, in the shape of
revolvers, would at last compel her to put an end
to that distracting tune. I put my head in at the
drawing-room door and, in the hollow accents-
employed (I believe) by the criminal classes when
visited by the police, exclaimed :

“ L , you’re wanted ! ”

Even then she waited to respond until the last
note had brayed itself out, and the roll had col-
lapsed hopelessly on the winder, before rising fit)m
her chair.

“They want the battery of your car,” I ex-
plained, as she advanced to the door, through which,
in the moonlight, innumerable figmes in the
panoply of war could be discerned on the terrace.

“ But I haven’t got it,” said L- . “ The Black

and Tans commandeered it long ago.”

Adonis smiled.

THE WINDS OF TIME

i8o

“ We have information,” he replied firmly, “ that
you have got it.”

L protested. Weeks ago, she said, her per-

mit had been cancelled by the forces of the Crown,
and the battery removed to the Police Barracks.

Adonis knew better.

“ Ladies,” he remarked gallantly, “ don^t always
imderstand about motor-cars. Your battery is here
and we have got to take it.”

“ Wasn’t it the magneto,” I suggested, “ that
was sent to the barracks ? ”

L ’s calm was momentarily broken. Noth-

ing could have been calculated to annoy her more
t han to suggest that she did not understand the
mechanism of a car.

“ It may have been the magneto,” she replied
loftily, “ but I thought it was the battery. In any
case, you can’t possibly have it. The garage is
locked. The chauffeur has the key, and he lives
over a mile away.”

Adonis sighed. “ It’s very disagreeable for us,”
he remarked, “ but we have our orders and we
must obey them.” Beckoning to a satellite, half
hidden in the fuchsia growing against the wall,
“ Get on your bicycle,” he said, “ and fetch the
chauffemr.” Lighting a cigarette he leant peace-
fully against the door.

“ A beautiful night,” he drawled between the
puffs of smoke.

“ So beautiful,” I remarked acidly, “ that per-
haps you won’t mind spending the rest of it out-
side, We were going to bed when you arrived.
The chauffeur no doubt will attend to your wants.”

He bowed, retreated down the steps and joined
his comrades on the terrace. I locked the door,
drew the curtains, and we went upstairs. But not
to bed. From the landing windows we watched

NOT THE END

l8l

for the arrival of the chauffeur. The moon had
hidden itself behind a bank of cloud. It was
very dark, but in the avenue we could dimly discern
figures moving among the trees. In less than an
hour we heard the tramp of feet on the road, the
clanging of the gate, and a procession, in the
midst of which the reluctant chauffeur could be
seen, marched up the drive. They disappeared
under the archway leading to the yard. A few
moments later they reappeared with the battery,
formed up with shouts at the gate and vanished
into the night, leaving, we subsequently discovered,
sentries posted at various strategic points to ensure
that no one left the house to give information.

“ Extremely tame,” we decided, as we brushed
our hair before getting into bed.

But later, we realized the military importance
of the occasion when we learnt that it had taken
sixty men, armed to the teeth, to obtain a battery
from two defenceless women.

4 : 4 : ^

The F ^s to tea next day, plunged in gloom ;

worn and grey and without hope. I did my
best to cheer them by saying that a settlement
seemed to be in sight.

“ Ah, then,'' I was told, “ the real trouble will
begin,” Later — “ It is the end of us aU,” they said.

“ Well,” I remarked cheerfully, “ the end of us
is not the end of the world, nor yet the end of
Ireland.”

Obviously they did not agree. Like the rest of
one’s class in Ireland, for years they had been
furiously antagonistic to everything Irish. The
Gaelic League was the first object of their denun-
ciation. So much so, that to belong to it was to
become a social outcast.

THE WINDS OF TIME

182

Without any sense of art or literature them-
selves, absorbed in the narrow round of lives
devoted to agriculture and horse-breeding, hunt-
ing and racing, that Ireland should aspire to
literary achievements filled them with scorn and
derision.

“What is wanted in this coxmtry,” one heard
annoiniced times without number, “ is law and
order and common sense, not poets, but people
who will spray their potatoes and cut their hay
before it rots.”

The Abbey Theatre, which, through some unfor-
tunate mistake, omitted to close its doors on the
night of King Edward’s funeral, and which they
described in consequence as “ a sink of disloyalty,”
was the next object of contempt. The new drama-
tic movement, which a few years ago was trans-
forming Dublin from a place of cobwebby decay
into a hive of artistic activity, excited their indigna-
tion. If they had had their way they would have
suppressed it by force. The mere fact that any-
one should find, in Irish myth or legend, material
for poetry or drama reduced the gentlemen of
Ireland to derision. From the Provost of Trinity
down, everybody mocked. The poetry of Yeats,
at the summit of his genius, entrancing Europe
with the beauty of his lyrics, was described (by the
few who had heard of it) as “ balderdash,” Synge’s
plays as “ nothing but bad language and blas-
phemy.”

A professor firom Harvard once came to call on
me, with an introduction firom a London publisher.
I was out when he arrived. He was shown into
my “ den,” where I found him, some minutes
later, transfixed, in front of my bookshelves.

“ I have been three months in Ireland,” he said,
“and have been in every house of importance

OBUQJCJITY IN IRELAND 1 83

in the country. This is the first one in which I
have found a copy of Yeats’s poetry. Do you
read it?”

I showed him my collected editions of both Yeats
and Synge’s works, and assured him I had read
everything they had written.

“Amazing,” he replied. “You are the only
person I have met outside Dublin who has even
heard of them ; and even in Dublin, Professor
Mahafiy— who, by the way, assured me that it
was mere waste of time studying Gaelic manu-
scripts — did nothing but jeer at both Synge and
Yeats.”

“ If you have been three months in this country,”
I replied, “ you must by this time surely have
realized that Trinity College is the last place to
recognize Irish genius. Indeed, of one of the most
celebrated of her sons, the only thing that is recorded
in Dublin is that he was once supposed to have
cheated in a bicycle race. In Ireland, nobody
can hope to achieve fame, except as a grower of
potatoes or as the owner, or trainer, of a race-
horse.”

As I was entertaining the F s, my thoughts

reverted to the American profesor, and to the
astonishment he had expressed on the subject of
Unionist Ireland.

For the F are typical of their class ; of the

age about to end : a class which thought itself
the backbone of the country and flattered itself
on its “ understanding ” of the people, and on the
people’s appreciation of it. And suddenly the
people turned, and would have none of it. Siim
Fein, Bolshevism, call it what you will : day by
day the line of cleavage between the two classes
was growing more marked. Amoi^ the old, a
measure of respect, and even fiicaidship, still

WJJLNiia \jr 1JLJW.£/

104.

obtained. But from the young, the slouching
youth which props itself against the hedge, and is
to be seen spitting from the parapet of every bridge
into the river below, instead of greeting and cap-
touchings, averted glances, if not actually hostile
looks. Completely gone between them was any
feeling of friendship ; going, almost gone, every
trace of the good manners for which the Irish
peasant was once famed.

And for all these changes, the Unionists are not
themselves blameless. For never did they show
any sympathy with those of their countrymen who
were struggluig to develop the soul of Ireland ;
never did they display any imagination where the
aspirations of their own country were concerned.
Instead, invariably, they clung to England. And
England, always encouraging them in the belief
that she was standing by them, gradually let them
down. One by one, events came creeping on,
depriving them of their power. Mr. Wyndham, it
was true, was thrown to the wolves ; but his Act
remained. The land kept passing to the people.
Gladstone died, and Parnell was broken, but
Home Ride came marching on. Redmond went,
and Sirm Fein arose in fire and murder, but the
Irish landlords, more fiercely anti-Irish than ever,,
continued to cling to a Union which was already
doomed, and to call for help to England, who
never had any use for them except as election
cries.

It is, perhaps, not altogether their fault, but
rather the malign fate yrhich sent them, so ill-
equipped, into a country where such impossible
difficulties exist.

For nowhare else in Europe do such problems
prevail as in Ireland, where the classes and the
masses belong to a different race and a different

CONTRADICTIONS

185

religion. In these circumstances, or perhaps be-
cause of them, it is inevitable that in political
outlook they should also differ.

Here and there, younger members of the “ landed ’ ’
classes, some Catholic and even more Protestant,
identified themselves with the National movements;
but, on the whole, the outlook on life of the descend-
ants of the Cromwellian troopers remains very much
to-day what it must have been in the days of the
Protector, “ Oh, for another Cromwell ! ” being,
indeed, the favourite war-cry, at that time, of
the anti-Irish, Protestant, Unionist “Die-hards.”
Having lived in Ireland all their lives, they claimed
to speak with intimate knowledge of the land of
their birth. On sympathy and understanding they
wisely did not insist.

But since Ireland is a land of contradictions,
however low their estimate of their fellow-country-
men, it is doubtful if they ever despised them quite
as much as they despised the British Government,
which, in complete disregard of their warnings,
proceeded to deliver Ireland into the hands of the
Irish. Abusing their own land on every possible
occasion, in no circumstances did they ever want
to live anywhere else. For Ireland, although she
has never unveiled herself to them, has cradled
them and, unconsciously, has wrapped them in her
spell.

* si: * *

Six weeks of cloudless blue, without a drop of
rain — ^a record for Kerry.

M who had been demobilized and was out

of a job, arrived on a viat. He said he had come
to “ protect ” us — God help him ! — ^an «c-officer
of the British Army in die house being quite the
surest possible invitation for trouble. Having
thrown his revolver into the Lake, buried his field-

THE WINDS OF TIME

i86

glasses in the garden and hidden his uniform
between the mattresses in a spare bed, we began
to feel easier in our minds about his presence in
our midst.

As it happened, we were only just in time : for
we had another raid. On this occasion we were all
in bed. I had just awakened, with a start, out of
my first sleep, when I heard the noise of many

feet outside. I sat up, and the next minute L

came into my room.

“ There are men knocking at the door,” she said.

“ Let them knock,” I replied. I dislike having
my sleep disturbed, and my temper is never at its
best in the early hours of the morning. A deafening
succession of bangs on the door followed. I got up,

put on a dressing-gown, and followed L to

the landing window. Several men were standing
in front of the house.

“ What do you want ? ” I inquired.

“ Have you any glasses ? ”

“ What sort of glasses ? ”

“ Telescope or spy-glasses.”

“ No.”

“ Are you sure ? ”

“ Quite.”

“Well, we have to search the house. You’ll
have to open the door.”

I refused indignantly.

“ Do you know who we are ? ”

I replied not very politely, to the effect that I
neither knew nor cared.

“ We’re the I.R.A.” (Irish Republican Army.)

Obviously I was meant to be impressed, if not
to shriek and fall terror-stricken on my knees.

Instead o£ which, I merely asked why they didn’t
cmne in the daytime.

“Because it’s not convenient.”

A RAID 187

“ You mean because you’re afraid to ! ” I sug-
gested.

“ That’s exactly it,” was the unexpected admis-
sion.

Eventually, after the exchange of further com-
pliments and threats, we went down and opened
the hall door. Six men in uniform of sorts,
with Colonial hats, carrying rifles and revolvers,

clattered in. L , in a diaphanous dressing-

gown, her hair in plaits tied up with red ribbon,
advancing with a silver candlestick, conducted them
to the drawing-room, where they remained, ab-
sorbed in the contemplation of a case of miniatures.
Being much too wrathful at such an intrusion to
take any interest in the investigation of my belong-
ings, I remained in the haU. Suddenly I remem-

, bered M . If he appeared on the scene there

surely would be murder. I flew upstairs, opened
the door of his room, heard snores and heavy
breathing, and returned, relieved, downstairs.
The raiders by this time were in the dining-room,
investigating the knives in the sideboard drawer.
I seated myself on the stairs. They trooped out
into the passage, examining the walls with mani-
fest interest.

“ Have you any military equipment ? ” the
leader asked, halting m front of me.

“ Is it likely ? ” I replied evasively, thinking of
the “ British warm ” imder the mattress in a spare
bedroom. The answer appeared to be satisfactory,
for, mercifully, he did not pursue the subject any
further. What would they do next, I wondered.
Would they go upstairs ? At all costs I was deter-
mined to prevent that. Rising to my full height,
armed with a silver candlestick, I stood on the
lower stair. They were, I observed, very young.
It was not unnatural to conclude that they were

THE WINDS OP TIME

l88

also very shy. Young Irishmen always are. My
attire was exceedingly scanty, my hair was hanging
down my back. My bare feet were in pink satin
slippers.

“ Wouldn’t you like to see our bedrooms ? ” I
inquired in a voice of assumed sweetness.

The leader became suddenly bashful.

“ No — no — not at all — ^not at all ” he stam-

mered, overcome with confusion. “ Come on, boys,
come on,” and the party clattered hastily past the
stairs, back into the hall, and out by the front door,
apologizing profusely, as they went, for having

“ disturbed ” us ; just as M , brandishing his

boot-trees, appeared at his bedroom door ; while,
from the back regions, maids, in varying degrees
of excitement, began to assemble, and refused to
return to bed xmtil they had made tea, a rite which,
in Ireland, is invariably celebrated in all moments
of crisis.

As for our visitors, it seems they did not go far.
A smeU of tobacco wafted in at my window, and
an occasional suppressed cough, leading me to con-
clude that an outpost had spent the rest of the

night on the terrace beneath ; while M ,

attired in ancient khaki trousers, on his way to an
early bathe in the lake, walked, next morning, into
a sentry posted in the yard. Apparently my taunt
had taken effect, for all day they hung about in
the bushes and on the mountain above the road,
appearing in force, wearing masks, at 5 p.m. at the
Chutes, less than a quarter of a mile away ; search-
the house from cellar to attic, and so terrifying
the driver of the weekly provision cart, who was
at the door when they arrived, that he drew the
corks of the bottles of stout he was in the act of
delivering, and, pourii^ their contents down his
throat, gathered up the reins and drove wildly

A TRUCE 189

away, declaring that never again would he return
to so dangerous a place.

At dusk we made a bonfire of M ’s uniform,

replanted the field-glasses in a secinrer spot, and
awaited developments. All night the tramp of
feet marching on the road could be heard. Boat-
loads of men came down the lake. Signals flashed
from every motmtain. Searchlights played on all
the houses. Nobody slept.

Nothing happened.

Next day rumours of a truce filled the air.

:{e 4c

The truce having duly materialized, we all pro-
ceeded to weep on each other’s necks, the (British)
lion lying down with the (Irish) lamb, who, more
serpent-like than lamb-like, promptly made use of
it to gather up firesh force and material for the
eventual renewal of the struggle.

On the seacoast, arms, it was said, were being
landed.

In the dead of night, carts rattling suggestively
could be heard going up the mountain road.
Stories of prodigious armaments were whispere5d
round. “ The biggest gun the world has ever
seen ” had arrived in Glencar. “ ‘ Big Bertha,’ no
doubt, imported from Germany,” I suggested, after
what L calls one of my “ incredulous silences.”

My informant, however, had never heard of Big
Bertha. “ I couldn’t say if it’s from Germany it
came,” was the reply, “ but they do be telling me
a shell from it would reach to Killamey,”

My only hope was that, on its way, it would not
lay Carrantuohill flat.

One night, about ten o’clock, having heard the

soimd of sawing close to the house, M and I

sallied forth. Down at the marshy end of the fileld

THE WINDS OF TIME

190

near the fir wood, we came upon a number of men
cutting alders,

“What do you rhean by coming here in the
night and cutting down my trees ? ” I inquired
of those who had not jumped over the fence at our
approach.

“ They’re not your trees,” replied an objection-
able youth with a hatchet in his hand.

“ If they are not mine,” I replied, “ they cer-
tainly are not yours, and you have no right to
come here stealing them.”

“ We’re not stealing,” he shouted ; “ the trees
aren’t yours, they belong to Ireland.”

Seeing the type of patriot I had to deal with, I
addressed him a few remarks on Ireland, which

M followed up with some further ones as to

his particular place in it. The youth looked like
murder, and probably would have indulged his
yearning for it, had not two older men returned
to the scene at that moment.

I addressed my remarks to them, while the youth
passed his hand over the edge of his hatchet,
sampling its sharpness. “ This is a breach of the
truce,” I said, “ and urdess you all leave immedi-
ately I will report it to the liaison officer in Cork.”

The men, several more of whom had now joined
the party, held a consultation.

One of them came up.

“ How much do you want for the trees ? ” he
inquired.

“ I wasn’t thinking of selling them,” I replied,
“ but if you want to buy them, you can come to
the house in the morning and we can discuss the
matter.”

“ Are you going to report us ? ”

“ Unless you go away at once, I certainly will.”

They gathered up their saws and their hatchets.

WAR-WORN igi

jumped over the fence and disappeared in the dark-
ness of the wood.

We waited for some time, close by the field, to
see if their departure was genuine ; then wandered

back to the house, where we found L on the

verge of starting with a lantern in search of our
mutilated remains.

“ What in the world can they want those rotten
alders for ? ” I asked.

“Gunpowder,” said M , “is made from

them.”

if: 4^

Several weeks passed ; affairs remained for some
time still in the balance ; nobody seemed particu-
larly hopeful of a successful settlement. Breaches
of the truce continued to recur, in spite of the
efforts of the Republican leaders to put &em down.
Only on one other occasion, however, were we
disturbed by the knocking at the door after dark,
which all Ireland had learnt to dread, but which,
in the last month, one had almost forgotten to think
about.

A party of men handed in the following note :

Oglaig na h-Eireann,
Headquarters,

Kjerry No. 2 Brigade.

“ I would feel so grateful if you were so kind as
to give me some apples for some of our war-worn
troops, who are now on a holiday.”

O/C.

Equally war-worn, I, too, set out the following
week on a holiday — ^to Italy.

CHAPTER XVIII

A JOURNEY — ^POLITICS AND EGGS — ^A VISITOR — SELEC-
TIONS — ^THE CIVIL WAR — MORE RAIDS

I RETURNED the following year. I can’t think
why. The situation had in no way improved.
On the contrary, the Civil War which had broken
out after the split over the Treaty was, if anything,
rather worse than the Black and Tan War.

My journey was considerably complicated by the
fact that, the railway line having been tom up
between Dundrum and Limerick Jimction, the
train from Dublin to Mallow had in consequence
to make a circular tour of Ireland. As it crawled
on its irresolute way, on a track as apparently as
unkn own to the engine-driver as it was to myself
(incidentally the only first-class passenger), the
Great Southern and Western Railway seemed to
me the emblem of Ireland’s despair in the war to
end Freedom.

For months the subject of tmceasing attacks by
raiders, robbers and murderers, with the possi-
bility, round every corner, of an ambush or
obstraction of some kind devised by “patriots”
bent on bringing their country , to economic ruin
and bankmptcy, there was litde certainty of any-
thing in a journey by this line at that time than the
misang of any and every connection, varied with
the possibility of losing one’s luggage, if not one’s
life.

Meanwhile, as we crawled along in the dusl^

iga

DESPAIR AT RATHMORE

193

there was ample time for studying the psychology
of the wayside stations at which we halted, presum-
ably for the purpose of enabling the stationmaster
to study the contents of the Cork Examiner, borrowed
from the guard.

It was raining, and the prevailing dampness lent
to the platforms by which we lingered an air of
bleakness and desolation which seemed to envelope
in an atmosphere of decay the more or less
inanimate car-driver, with red hair and battered
hat, propped against the railings of the exit gate,
the flapper, with shapeless legs, gazing into space
against the booking-oiiice door.

Almost, I felt, I could understand the spirit which
planned an ambush or a raid in a station like
Rathmore, producing, as it does, the feeling that
nothing, by any possibility, could ever happen to
it or in it.

Once upon a time, many years ago, I persuaded,
with considerable difficulty, an English cook to
come with me to Kerry. She made innumerable
objections, one of them being that her mother would
not hear of her “ going abroad.” Eventually,
however, she consented.

On the Rosslare boat, when she emerged, paler
even than the dawn which broke after a tempestu-
ous night, I saw that, manifestly, she was regretting
her decision.

At Mallow, where I always feel that Dante’s
warning “ Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,”
should be suspended above the clock, which records
the passing of time but not any corresponding pass-
ing of trains, it was obvious her mind was made
up.

At Rathmore she came to the carriage window
and gave me notice.

I could not blame her. For anyone who does

o

W.T.

TH& WINDS OF TIME

194

not know what lies beyond, in the shape of Farran-
fore, might well be pardoned for thinking them-
selves, at Rathmore, at the end of the unknown.

But Farranfore is worse. Bleaker and wetter,
exposed to every blast of heaven ; being a junction
it has more railway lines, leading to even remoter
regions. There are never any porters and seldom
any passengers. A refreshment room, containing
mouldy biscuits and watery tea, adds mockery
unknown in any other Kerry station.

Beyond the confines of the platform are no signs
of human habitation. Melancholy fields stretch in
empty Nothingness- What happens to people
stranded for the night I dare not think. There is
no hotel, no public-house, not even a car-driver of
bleary aspect to lend encouragement to the belief
that, somewhere in space, a rrfuge for travellers
may yet exist.

How and why Farranfore ever arose as a jimction
is a mystery which may be known to the directors —
there is said to be one for every eleven miles of the
line — ^but will never be solved by any traveller on
the Great Southern and Western Railway, for whose
spiritual consolation I would suggest the framing,
in every compartment, of R. L. Stevenson’s appro-
priate maxim to the effect that “ if is better to
travel hopefully than to arrive.”

* Hs

In Kerry, the state of the political situation can
always be gauged by the price of eggs. In June
they went down to eight s hi ll in gs per himdred, by
which we inferred that the hopes of the London
G>nference, which, a fortnight before, had sent
them up to ten and sixpence, had been dashed to
the ground.

It was the same in the Great War, only then eggs

PROGRESS BACKWARD 1 95

went up and up, whereas, in the Irish War, they
went down and down.

All over the west of Ireland are innumerable little
farms, varying in size from five to twenty acres, on
which life is eked out painfully and precariously by
the sale of agricultural produce : the financial
destiny of the owners being determined by the
prices prevailing on market and fair days. For
months there were no buyers. With the holding
up of trains, the burning and looting of wagons,
trade came to a standstill. When the Provisional
Government and the Republicans came to terms,
the buyers reappeared. Cattle went up to
a head, eggs half a crown a hundred. Farmers,
whose bullocks and heifers had been on the verge
of dying from lack of food, jubilated. Hens picking
around in search of sustenance were heartened by
fistfuls of oats flung at them, to encourage them in
the laying of eggs which, at a figure known as
“ pence apiece,” might once more be worth pro-
ducing. With each of Michael Collins’ journeys
across the water the price fell another sixpence,
until they were back again at eight s hillin gs.
Despair reigned once more.

Every day the hopelessness of the situation, the
impossibility of political agreement, became mdre
apparent. Endless conferences took place, mys-
terious “ pacts ” and “ agreements ” were come to,
with the result that Mr. Arthur Griffiths encourag-
ingly remarked that we were back where we were
the previous December.

Living, as one did, in the toppling ruins of what,
a few years, ago, was a prosperous country, one
could not help feeling amazement at the credulity
of the people. Driven off their lands and farms,
robbed of their money by local bandits, cheated by
profiteers ; with pigs and cattle down to nothing.

THE WINDS OF TIME

196

while the food they bought remained at war
prices ; duped and doped by promises of fabulous
prosperity to come, they accepted, apparently with-
out complaining, a situation bringing them every
day nearer to bankruptcy. For in Ireland, the
politician, like the priest, lives on promises of a
problematical hereafter. The priest, unable to
solve the mysteries of existence in this world,
preaches the joys of the next : the politician,
incapable of making life possible for the masses
under one Government, proclaims the wonderful
advantages to be obtained under another, leading
the people to believe that, under a Republic, there
would be no taxes and no imemployment, that the
lanH would be divided between everybody, that
mines full of gold and silver would be opened up
in the moimtains, and that everybody would have
a pension and would be rich, happy and free. If
it had not been pathetic it would have been absurd.
But the disillusionment to come, one felt, would be
no laughing matter. Already distant mutterings
might be heard. “ Is this the freedom we have
fought and bled for ? ” being asked by mem-
bers of the I.R.A., held up at the point of the
revolver by others belonging to a later offshoot of
the same service. “ What are we getting out of
it ? ” being einother ominous question which was
heard even more frequendy as the ineptitude of the
politicians became more manifest.

Meanwhile, like the Kingdom of Heaven, which
we all hope to achieve (at some future and indefinite
date), Ireland lived on in hopeful expectation of a
Republic. That, under it, the situation might
become even more chaotic was an eventuality
which must, however, have been suspected in secret
by the most ardent supporters of the movement.
At the station one day, the confusion being more

OUTRAGES

197

than usually apparent owing to the 4.20 train
having forgotten to stop and the 5.40 being, in
consequence, unable to start, the indignation of a
local patriot, who found himself stranded five miles
from a public-house, was at any rate illuminating.

“ Glory be to God,” he shouted to the helpless
officials assembled on the platform, “ what’s hap-
pened to yez at all — ^is the Republic upon us, that
ye’re all so bemoidered ? ”

Like the fowls of the air, we carried on from day
to day, taking no thought for the morrow, hesitating
to sow when none could foretell who would reap
or gather into barns the seed they had sown.
Existing on the sufferance of our neighbours, we
were sufficiently grateful to them and to Providence
if, on waking in the morning, we found ourselves in
our own bed and tmder our own roof. For as
things were, if you were unfortunate enough to
displease your neighbour, or if he happened to want
your house, or your land, or your shop for himself,
he would take it from you. You could not prevent
him, for he was armed and you were not. He had
only to take possession and you would find your-
self, with your flocks and your herds, on the hard
high-road, with no redress, since there was no law
and no government in the land.

Mr. Blennerhassett, a large landowner near
Tralee, who was kidnapj>ed, was motored one
night to some distant region where, at the point of
the revolver, he was compelled to sign awray some
forty acres of his land.

The Magills, two girls living alone, were attacked,
shots fired for over an hour round the house, and
their cattle driven off. In the dead of night
innumerable motors were forcibly removed by
armed men. Bicycling along the road, women and
^Is were held up and compelled to complete their

THE WINDS OF TIME

198

journey on foot, while their attackers rode away on
their machines. At Quarter Sessions in Killamey
one day, an armed man entered the Court in the
middle of its transactions and announced that he
would allow no civil cases to be proceeded with,
whereupon the Judge was compelled to close the
Court.

Yet Kerry remained comparatively quiet. In
other parts things were very much worse. Not a
day passed without the robbery of a Bank, the
seizing of a factory, the burning or looting of some
helpless person’s property- When redress or pro-
tection was sought at Headquarters, the I.R.A.,
while expressing sympathy, admitted complete help-
lessness in establishing law and order under existing
conditions.

Whether we might expect any improvement in
the next five or the next five hxmdred years was a
matter of opinion. Personally, I was inclined to
think that by the time Dail Eireann had wearied of
the personal recrimination for the purpose of which
its members apparently assembled together, the
next Exiropean war would be upon us. In view of
that approaching catastrophe nothing that hap-
pened in Ireland could by comparison be of very
much consequence.

Ot «

Our only visitor for nearly a month was a beggar
woman. When I asked her where she lived ;

“ I declare to goodness, I don’t live anywhere,”
she replied. “ I do be staying around with different
people and it’s very troublesome, for you have to
be complimenting them all the time you’d be in
tfieir house.”

Recollections of week-end parties and their
incidental “complimenting” enlisted my sym-

ELECTIONS

199

pathy to the extent of half a crown and an old
skirt, which brought a shower of blessings and the
wish that I might “ walk in silk and satin ” all my
days.

^ ^ ^

In the Elections held in June, the country showed
itself generally pro-Treaty, the “ Women and
Childers ” party, headed by Erskine Childers, going
down, Mrs. O’ Callaghan, widow of the murdered
Mayor of Limerick, and the interminable Mary
McSwiney, remaining the only representatives of
their sex.

In Kerry, where bullets are generally considered
a more efficacious method than votes for deciding
political issues, there were no elections, nobody
feeling sufficiently optimistic to oppose the Repub-
lican candidates. As to the Constitution issued
to the public, it was obvious it would not commend
itself to the extremists on account of the oath, and
because, while actually bestowing complete in-
dependence on Ireland, it appeared to give powers
to the King which, in reality, he would not possess.

If not meant to be taken seriously, as we are told
is the case in Canada, then it is unfortunate that
these clauses should have been inserted in the
Treaty, where their wording was bound to arouse
the suspicions of Ireland, As it was, Mr, de Valera
and his friends loudly declared that Ireland’s
“ slave Parliament ” would not be free to make her
own laws, and, among the popular convictions in
these parts was that, under the Treaty, “ Irish
soldiers would have to fight in English wars.”

No sooner were the Elections over than fightmg
started in Dublin, the Rory O’Conoiites in the
Four Courts being besieged by Free State troops.
Most of the casualties ware cleans who, in Dub-
lin, always take an inter^ted part in their country’s

200

THE WINDS OF TIME

battles and generally appear to stop the bullets of
both belligerent parties.

The railway lines were, of course, again tom up ;
once more we found ourselves without letters or
Dublin newspapers. The washerwoman, how-
ever, arrived one morning with the news that the
“ Foru Walls ” of Dubhn were down, so we con-
cluded that the Battle of the Four Courts was over.
Incidentally she seemed impressed by the fact that
the priest had given up praying for de Valera, and
apologized for the cow having eaten my stockings
as they were drying on the hedge.

In the evening came the Cork Examiner, our only
link with the outer world, confirming the news of
the surrender of the garrison of the Four Courts
and containing a statement of the Republican
Army position, from which it could only be assumed
that fighting was to be general all over the country.
In fact, in Kerry it had already begun. Listowd,
the Headquarters of the Free State, had been
captured. Killorglin was preparing its defences
with sandbags and flour sacks. “ Wind up ” all
round. Dan said he would probably “ have to
go.” An ardent Republican, and conceiving it
his duty to wave the flaming torch of patriotism,
obviously he could not altogether reconcile him-
self to leaving the tomato house, at that moment
at a critical stage of its development. With all the
other youth of the country he had been “ called
up.” The general feeling, however, seemed to be
one of hesitation. “ They broke their faith with
us in Dublin,” he said, “ we might as weU break
ours now.”

Somehow I felt I should not lose Dan. As I was
told he was “ very high up in the I.R.A.” I hoped
his eacample might be followed by those under his
command in the garden. I would have given a

TERRIFIC FIGHTING

201

good deal to know his exact position in the Repub-
lican Army, but so intense was the discretion
observed by all parties that I was never likely to
be told. Sometimes when I heard him issuing
orders about the manure to his subordinates, I
detected the authoritative tones of a Brevet Lieu-
tenant-Colonel ; at other moments when I met
him trundling the wheel-barrow, I would have
taken him for a recently promoted Lance-Corporal,
had it not been for the fact that practically every-
body in the I.R.A. at that time was an officer.
Indeed, it was reported that, at an inspection, the
Divisional General was heard to inquire : “ Where
is tke Private of this Battalion ? ”

With so many armies to choose from, and the
practical certainty of achieving in any of them the
rank of Major-General before the age of thirty, no
man in Ireland should have been without the
means of subsistence. No qualification save that
of enterprise seemed necessary. Of a distinguished
Commandant in one Army it was openly asserted
that he was dismissed for robbing a Bank — ^while

Mrs. M , who wrote to tell the sweep to call,

received the following reply : “ Brigadier-General
Murphy is sorry he can’t clean your chimneys as
his military duties keep him too busy, but his son.
Colonel Commandant Padraic Murphy, will call to
do them on Tuesday morning.”

ale ale He

Accounts of “ desperate ” battles and bombard-
ments continued to arrive from all parts of the
country : the surprising thing about such terrific
fighting being the absence, in nearly every case, of
a single casualty. Unlike the Gael of old, who
“ went into battle and always fell,” the modem
Trishman seems capable of taking part in a hundred

202

THE WINDS OF TIME

battles and never falling. Another novelty was the
introduction of a priest who, at the most intense
moment of the hostilities, invariably got up and
made a speech ; while even in Dublin, where the
fighting was on a more serious scale, enterprising
Press men drove, through machine-gun fire, in
jaimting cars down the principal battle thorough-
fares. It was all very remarkable, but when I
commented upon it to Dan he explained it.

“They don’t want to hurt anyone,” he said;
“ they’re not like the Black and Tans, killing all
before them.”

If one could have felt any confidence in the future
of Ireland one might have endured with greater
equanimity her distressing imbecilities. Out of
Russia in her elemental agony one felt that eventu-
ally something great might evolve. Nations, like
individuals, cannot be brought forth without birth-
pangs and sufferings.

Nothing begins and nothing ends
That is not paid with moan,

For we are bom in each other’s pain
And perish in our own.

The sadness of so many of us then was caused
by the feeling that there was so little sense in the
upheaval, that all the destruction was sheer waste —
the inevitable outcome, perhaps, of a Struggle in a
country where romantic lies are preferred to estab-
lished facts and where a poetic past is taken more
seriously thzin present actualities.

Meanwhile the sense of political calamity seemed
to ^read to the earth and sky ; a great blight
settled on the land. An iceberg was reported off
the Blaskets and, like the Russian soldiers in Scot-
land at the beginning of the War, who were seen
by “ a fiiend of a friend,”, was solemnly believed in.

REPUBLICAN LOOTING 203

Some unusual explanation was certainly required
for the arctic conditions, more suited to the summit
of Mount Everest than to Kerry at midsummer.
In July the leaves had begun to fall. Sporadic
efforts to cut the hay resulted in sopping wisps
blowing about the dripping fields. Nothing grew.
In the flagged garden the antirrhinums refused to
sit up, to add even an inch to their stunted stature.
Nothing ripened. The gooseberries were hard as
bullets, the peaches small and green, while plums
and pears, of which spring gave tmusual promise,
dropped in disgust off the trees after the hails of
May.

^ ^ 4c

An invitation typical of the times in which we
lived came in August. “ Do come to us for a few

days,” wrote G in Co. Waterford. “ If you

hurry up you may be in time for a battle. The
bridges are all blown up and the roads mined, but
even if they do by any chance go off, I’m told they
wouldn’t blow the hat off your head.”

The post usually consisted of a souvenir of The
Times, in the shape of an empty newspaper wrapper
with “ found without contents in raided mail ”
inscribed on it. AU the telegraph wires were cut.
Every motor in the coimtry was taken. One even-
ing L and I, returning in her Rolls-Royce from

a day’s golf, found, drawn up at the front door, a
Ford car containing fom: men, one of whom got
out and came up to us.

“We have orders to take yotn car,” he said.

For a time L protested. The other three

got out of the Ford and stood around.

“ If you will not give it, we have orders to take
it by force,” said the Brigand-in-chief, whom I
recognized as the brother of a housemaid I had had
some years^ago, producing a typewritten document

THE WINDS OF TIME

204

which he handed to L — — . The Second in Com-
mand, who had been biting his nails in the back-
ground, advanced towards &e car. A revolver fell
ostentatiously out of his pocket. He stooped and
picked it up.

“ Do you really thiuk you’re doing yourselves or
Ireland any good by doing this sort of thing ? ” I
asked him. He scowled.

“ Anyway, we’re risking our lives doing it,” he
replied.

“ Ris king your lives,” I exclaimed in astonish-
ment, “ when you never go anywhere except to
unarmed people ! You wouldn’t come here if you
thought there was anyone with a gun in the place.”

He retired behind the car.

L came in. We shut the door.

The car was driven away.

All over the country, in otur stolen motors, the
Republicans careered wildly round : looting towns
and villages for food and clothing, terrifying the
unfortunate shopkeepers left with nothing to sustain
them but the hope of eventual revenge, “ We’ll
roast him alive in his house when he comes home ”
being perhaps the warmest feeling of welcome
awaiting the eventual return of the demobilized
Republican. Roasted alive or foimd dead in a
bog, whatever his eventual fate, it would not, one
felt, be enviable.

For a time an xmarmed, xmorganized com-
munity may be bludgeoned into apparent acquies-
cence by a few reckless desperadoes with revolvers —
but only for a time. Sooner or later the day of
reckoning must come. The mills of God grind
slow but they grind exceedingly small, and most of
those who, against the wishes of the many, brought
destruction on Ireland were themselves eventually
destroywi.

“ LIMERICK SITUATION ” 205

Meanwhile one was inclined to agree with Swift
that “ it is no dishonour to submit to the lion, but
who, with the figure of a man, can think with
patience of being devoured alive by a rat ? ”

With the waning of summer, the process known
as “ waking up ” was applied with still greater
force in Kerry. In addition to motors, horses and
traps were seized. Many of the shops and factories,
having been looted, closed down. Hundreds of
people were in consequence thrown out of employ-
ment. Cattle and pigs were a drug on the market,
while farmers, both large and small, were faced
with destitution.

The mails were raided again and again. The
only newspaper allowed to come through was the
Cork Examiner, which, having been seized by the
Republicans, contained extravagant accounts of
successes over the Free State troops, in which not
a single casualty ever appeared to occur in the
Republican ranks, the following being a typical
example of the wild exaggeration with which all
such achievements were coloured.

LIMERICK SITUATION

The gallant Volunteers of the Limerick Brigades, with
their comrades from Cork and Kerry who all fought with
such conspicuous bravery, against vastly greater numbers,
in Limerick, since the peace agreement there was treacher-
oudy broken by the Free State Officers, have now skilfully
withdrawn to the outskirts of the dty. The Sfrand and
Castle Barracks were blown to ruins by the British artillery
used by the Free State forces, but their heroic garrisons,
when only crumbling walls remained to defend, retreated
with daring courage through the enemy lines without suffer-
ing any casualties. The enemy shells bursting on inflammable
materials caused several fires, resulting in the destruction of
a condderable amount of property of the civilian population.

Two attempts by the Free State forces to advante towards

THE WINDS OF TIME

206

BrufFwere repulsed by the Republican forces, and the enemy
was forced to retreat.

On the hills near Lough Gur, about three miles on the
Limerick side of Bruff, two small columns of Free State
troops fired on each other by mistake, with the result that
one of their number was killed and six wounded.

In a most daring attack on Bruff Free State Barracks our
men fought their way to posts in close proximity to the out-
side walls. Fearlessly they charged over this fortification
right up to the Barrack, led by their dashing Commandant.
As the third Republican jumped the wall a bullet from the
defenders struck the magazine of his rifle, exploding the
firing caps of all the bullets, and knocking the rifle out of
his hand, but he escaped tminjured. His comrades stuck
their rifles into the loop-holes to fire into the barracks, but
anticipating the attack, the garrison had these effectively
plugged from the inside. Threatened with bombs from the
upper windows, and by enemy reinforcements and armoured
cars from a neighbouring military station, our forces returned
to their posts. In the attack one of our men was wounded.
Free State casualties unknown. Our men are displaying
admirable spirit, untiring courage and wonderful resource.

HEROIC DEFENCE OF WATERFORD CITY

The Waterford Brigade, supported by a Column from
Cork, met the enemy attack with marvellous determination.
At 3 p.m. on the 20th inst., enemy forces attacked our troops
in Manor Street, and Lady Lane I.R.A. Barracks, After
severe, fighting they succeeded in capturing the Manor Street
position, but aU our men got clear away. About the same
time a strong force of enemy troops attacked our outpost at
the Adelphi Hotel, several enemy machine-guns blazing
forth their deadly hail of lead. The intensity of fire smashed
in the defences, and eventually the garrison was cut off, and
the position was taken after a desperate conflict lasting nearly
two hours. Ten of our men were captured here, and a section
of Red Cross men.

At 4 p.m, on the same date the Free State troops sent an
ultimatum to our troops in the P.O. demanding the surrender
of that building and threatening in the event of refusal to
shell that position. No surrender ” being the reply, the
enemy opened fire with 7 machine guns and an 18-pounder.
At 6 o’clock the post had been reduced to ruins, so our men
evacuated it, losing one prisoner and one man woimded.

BLOODLESS BATTLES

207

The troops evacuating the P.O. reinforced the garrison in
Granville Hotel, and in Bolger’s, Broad Street. Immediately
following the destruction of the P.O. the enemy shelled the
Granville Hotel, and when the building had been practically
wrecked the defenders successfully made their way to rein-
force other posts without any casualties.

Shell fire was opened on the gaol about 4 p.m. and con-
tinued intermittently until about 6 o’clock. After the capture
of the Granville the bombardment of this post continued
xmtil about 9.30 p.m., when it ceased for the night.

On 2 1st at 5.30 a.m., the enemy opened heavy rifle and
machine-gun fire on our positions in the gaol and Barrack
Street area. At 7 a.m. shells again burst on the gaol, and
continued so for over an hour. Our troops replied vdth rifle
and machine-gun fire. Sniping operations continued until
noon, when fierce fighting developed in the vicinity of the
gaol and Barrack Street, and then the artillery crashed forth
its crashing missiles and heavy projectiles with such intensity
that the gaol was almost a complete wreck, but the brave
garrison refused to surrender, and fought a retirement to the
outskirts of the city.

Sniping operations continue at various points in the city.

Flying columns from the ist S.D. and reinforcements from
Tipperary marching to the relief of Waterford exchanged
shots with the enemy rearguard just as they entered the city.

The O.G. Free State forces (Brigadier Daly) had practically
all the Red Cross drivers arrested, and wrongfully accused
them of supplying the fighting troops. He also ordered the
Republican first-aid men off the streets, threatening to fire
on them if they did not obey the order.

Although subjected to machine-gun fire, four of our men
repeatedly repelled attempts by the enemy to cross the Suir
in boats at Maybridge. The work of the Gumann-na-mBan
and the Fianna Scouts is worthy of the greatest praise, and
all ranks fought with splendid gallantry and daring against
overwhelming forces, heavy artillery and endless supplies of
armaments.

The Tipperary columns are operating successfully in cutting
enemy communications, and repelling enemy attacks on
their respective areas.

LATEST REPORT FROM LIMERICK AREA

At 4.30 this morning a party of Republican troops with
an armoured car encoxmtered a party of Free State troops

THE WINDS OF TIME

i208

advancing towards Kilmallock. After a short engagement
the enemy retreated, leaving two armed prisoners in the hands
of the Republicans.

On Sunday morning at 7.30 a.m. one of our columns
engaged a party of Free State troops on the road between
Brmee and Kilmallock. After a sharp fight the Free State
forces retreated, leaving one dead. Two armed prisoners
were captured by our troops.

The same column entered another house near by and
captured five armed Free State troops, who did not put up
a fight. The total figures in these engagements were : 10
rifles, 620 rounds *303, 2 revolvers and 30 rounds -45, There
were nine prisoners taken and one Free Stater shot dead.

At 2 p.m. to-day oxir troops were informed that there was
a Column of Free State forces between Kilmallock and
Charleville. A party of 25 Republicans set out in a lorry
accompanied by an armoured car and went towards Kil-
mallock to meet them.

At 3.30 our forces came up with them near Thomastown.
Our men dismounted and took up positions. The Free State
troops retreated to a farmer’s house on the roadside. While
awaiting reinforcements, our men kept up an intermittent
fire, not being then strong enough to attack, as the seven
Free State troops did not enter the farmhouse but engaged
our column before they were forced to retreat to the house.

At 8 p.m. a further column of 21 men reinforced our troops.
The armoured car played machine-gun fire on the house,
which we also attacked with bombs, and at 9 p.m. the enemy
were forced to surrender ; 26 prisoners, 26 rifles, 2 revolvers,
and a quantity of ammunition fell into our hands. We foundi
that one of Ae enemy (O’Mahony, Blarney Street, Cork)
had been killed, and that M. O’Brien, who was in charge of a
Free State party, was severely wounded. We recovered a
prisoner of ours who had been captured earlier in the day,
and the situation is well in hand.

CHAPTER XIX

TERRIBLE TIMES

W HENEVER two people met :

“ Terrible times,” said one.

“ Indeed and they are,” said the other : a greet-
ing which quite took the place of time-honoured
remarks on the weather, and which expressed
your .appreciation of the seriousness of the situation
without committing you to sympathy with either

side. When the W s were raided, Mrs, W

was placed in a chair with a member of the I.R.A.
standing over her holding a revolver at her head.

After a prolonged silence, which was Mrs. W ^“s

dignified method of expressing her resentment, the
youth, who was obviously embarrassed, waving the
revolver in the air, soothingly exclaimed : “ Ter-
rible times, Mrs. W terrible times i ”

While everybody, in this remark, expressed their
appreciation of the spirit of the age, nobody made
the slightest effort to make them any less terrible.
On the contrary, the attitude of the public in
generzil only served to increase the terror. If the
shopkeepers in the towns had banded themselves
together and refused to deliver up their goods to
the Republicans, the looting could have been
stopped in a week. In the ordinary small southern
town, ten to twenty men daily held up hundreds of
inhabitants, who handed over to them everything
they asked for without a protest. If anyone dared
to utter a word of criticism of the actions of the

aog p

W.T.

210 THE WINDS OF TIME

LR.A,, even behind their backs, they were immedi-
ately met with a terrified “ Hush 1 It’s as much as
your life is worth to say that.” History in Ireland
is largely a question of monotonous repetition,
but in all its melancholy course it is doubtful if
there was ever quite so discreditable a silence as
that with which crime and outrage were met in
1922.

People were so terrified that they would submit
to any loss or personal humiliation in order to
save their lives. One of the few people who showed
any independence of character in Kerry was the
Protestant Dean of Ardfert, who was held up one
day by two armed men and told to hand over his
bicycle. “ You may shoot me if you like,” he
replied, “ but you shall not have my bicycle.”
He wasn’t shot, but they hit him on the head.
He fell on the road still chnging to his bicycle,
which they kicked, but which remains to this day
in his possession.

This was but an isolated instance. In the
generality of cases, a sullen acceptance took the
place of the determined resistance with which the
situation might have been met, had the national
backbone not been quite so invertebrate.

The whole character of Ireland deteriorated.
Killing £ind stealing became no longer crimes.
Fear, hate and suspicion took the place of the
afiection and fkiendliness which we all felt for each
other a few years ago. “ An ounce of fear is
better than a ton of love,” said a leading Republican,
summing up the policy of his party : a policy so
inherently false that it could only persist in a
country where Christianity seemed to have momen-
tarily perished.

“ Even our prayers don’t seem to be having
much effect,” Bridget the cook remarked gloomily

STRANGE TIMES

2II

one morning, “ and the fasting and all we done and
things no better.”

“ On the contrary,” I replied, “ worse than ever
— try praying for courage by way of a change.
Until Ireland stops shivering and shaking, like
one of your jellies, at the sight of a revolver, nothing
will ever be better.”

“ You wouldn’t like to die,” said Bridget.

“ Personally,” I remarked frigidly, “ I’d rather
be dead any day than alive in this country, the way
things are to-day.”

“ Lord save us,” said Bridget in accents of pious
horror.

Mr. McCartie, who was kidnapped, described
his experiences on returning.

Hol^g an important brief for the prosecu-
tion in a lawsuit due at Quarter Sessions in Kil-
lamey, the other side, in order that the case should
not be proceeded with, had him removed in the
dead of night by armed men and conveyed to “ an
unknown destination.” Having been blindfolded,
he had no idea where he was taken to, and was
moved twice during the week of his detention.
On each occasion he was confined in a small bed-
room with darkened windows. Three times a day
food was brought to him by a masked man. Each
meal was a repetition of the last, and consisted of
eggs, tea and bread and butter. He was offered
drink, but, being a teetotaller, refused ; and
cigarettes were supplied whenever he asked for
them. He had nothing to complain of in the
matter of courtesy. Nobody ever had with the
I.R.A. Apparently even when they murder you
they do it with polite regret. When they burnt

the A ’s house, the leader, who was one of their

own gardeners, as he locked the family and ser-
vants into the stables, was heard admonishing his

212

THE WINDS OF TIME

followers : “ Be careful, boys, don’t be destroying
the grass, her ladyship don’t like it thrampled.”

When Quarter Sessions were over, and the case
in which Mr. McCartie was interested had been
dismissed, owing to “ the prosecution having failed to
appear,” he was returned to his family, by motor,
blindfolded, in the dead of night.

Nothing had been said to him and he in turn had
spoken to nobody.

^ 4: :i:

“ Can I send a telegram to London ? ” I inquired
one day at the Post Office.

“ Only as a parcel,” was the astonishing reply.
“ The wires are cut to Cork, and the cross-Channel
telegraph suspended, but it can go as a parcel to
Fishguard and on, as a wire, from there to London.”

“ And how long will it take ? ” I inquired.

“ I couldn’t say,” replied the Postmistress, “ I
suppose about a week.”

I bethought me of a parcel of groceries ordered
a couple of months before from Dublin, which had
not yet arrived, and decided not to send the wire.

We were living in such strange times, for all I
knew the groceries might be travelling as a post card.

“ The world is upside down,” Mrs. Daly remarked
when we discussed the situation. One of the
regrets of my life was that Mrs. Daly lived so far
away and that I saw her so seldom.

The evening and the morning being the twenty-
first since we had seen a newspaper of any kind,
even the Cork Examiner no longer reaching us,
being bereft of trains, motor, horses and bicycles,
I decided one morning that, if I had to wailk all
the way, I would call on Mrs. Daly, whose reflec-
tions on the state of the coimtry would be sure to be
illuminating.

MRS. DALY

213

Mrs. Daly, by the way, was Mrs. Daly no longer.
The last year, so eventful in the history of Ireland,
had also witnessed stirring events in her life. In
October she buried her husband. The sad intel-
ligence was conveyed to me by her eldest daughter,
aged eleven, and was coupled with the request for
a blanket. “ Me mother said I was to tell you
that me father died last week, and she do be feeling
the cold very much and she hopes that God will
prosper you and could you assist her with a blanket
or some small help.”

I had no time to pay Mrs. Daly a visit of con-
dolence before going abroad. When, some time
after my return in the spring, I was about to do so,
I was electrified to hear that she had not only married
again but had captured as her husband the match
of the neighbourhood : a widower who, as a
matter of fact, was cointing a neighbour and a
great friend of her own, when Mrs. Daly swooped
down and, carrying him off to a priest, married
him herself.

Toiling along the deserted road over the moma-
tain and through the bog, I eventually arrived,
weary and damp, at Mrs. Daly’s. I congratulated
her on her recent nuptials.

“ I’m the best-dressed woman in the place
now,” she remarked with pride, “ and I have a hat
with a feather.”

The cottage showed no trace of her newly
acquired prosperity. The leak in the roof had
extended to the walls, which were covered with
moss, which seemed, indeed, to be growing even
on the green faces of her tubercular children.

“ Are you going on living here ? ” I inquired.
“ Hasn’t your husband a farm of his own ? ”

" He have it sold,” said Mrs. Daly, “ and the
way things are, better for him have the money he

THE WINDS OE TIME

214

got for it in the bank. This place is poor, but
sure it’s good enough till things is settled.”

“ When will that be ? ”

“ The dear knows. Terrible times,” Mrs. Daly
sighed.

I made the appropriate rejoinder.

“ If they don’t settle soon among themselves the
country v^l be destroyed altogether.”

“ I thought it was that already,” I suggested.

“ Indeed and it is. Ruined we all are.”

“ It’s the fault of people like you,” I remarked.

“How so?”

“ It’s your own boys who are doing it. Isn’t
Batty in the I.R.A. ? ”

We were quite alone in the cottage, which con-
sisted of one room. Except for the children play-
ing down the road no one was within several
miles of us. But Mrs. Daly’s voice sank instinc-
tively to a whisper.

“ Out every night, and not a word to his mother
where he’d be going or if he’d ever be returning
— ^and two of his fingers blown off.”

“ Fighting ? ”

“ Not at aU. Batty wouldn’t like to be fighting.
Making explosions he was. That much he told me.”

I suppose my face expressed a certain nervous
apprehension, for Mrs. Daly hastened to reassure
me. I resumed my seat on ascertaining that there
were no bombs concealed underneath it.

“ Things is a fright,” continued Mrs. Daly. “ I
suppose you heard tell of the battle in Tralee,
hundreds dead and dying, and coffins going over the
mountains for days.”

“ Nine men, I understand, were killed and two
wounded in Tralee.”

“ And Kexunare blown to pieces by the English
Nayy,” continued Mrs. Daly, completely regardless

VENERABLE LADIES

215

of my correction. “ Terrible work there and at
Ballycartie, dead bodies lying out on both sides of
the road.”

“ Turnips I thought it was,” I remarked, “ not
corpses. McCarthy’s field, I heard, was shelled,
and his turnips blown up and scattered all over the
place.”

“ The poor man,” exclaimed Mrs. Daly, her
sympathy temporarily diverted from the thought
of the corpses to McCarthy’s devastated crops ;
“ he’ll be ruined entirely.”

“ We’re all ruined,” I remarked despondently.

“ You must be terribly knocked about without
the motor-car.”

“ We are.”

“ Indeed then, it was a pity for them to have
taken it. The priest preached about it on Sunday.
A disgrace, he said it was, to be treating two such
venerable ladies like that.”

“ Did he really say venerable ? ” I inquired
faintly. My hair is not yet grey, and, though
neither of us aspired to the athleticism of Made-
moiselle Lenglen, both L and I could still

skip about more or less actively on the tennis lawn.
Somehow “ venerable ” hardly seemed the truthful
description one might expect firom the pulpit.

“ He did then,” replied Mrs. Daly. “ Two of
the most venerable la^es in the country, he said,
and all you both done for the poor people and the
motor lent to the sick and dying whenever it’d be
wanted.”

I breathed again, consoling myself with the
thought that “ venerated ” had been the adjective
by which we had been origmally designated by the
sympathetic priest.

“ Common robbery, he said it was.”

“ So it was.”

2i6 the winds of time

“ They done it for Ireland,” said Mrs. Daly.

“ Disgracing Ireland, that’s what they’re doing,”
I ventured, regardless of the consequences that
might result from my reckless criticism.

“ They’re risking their lives.”

“ Nonsense,” I replied heatedly ; “ they take
no risks. They never steal except from unarmed
people.”

“ And the battles they’re fighting ! ” shrieked
Mrs. Daly.

“ There are no battles,” I replied, “ only am-
bushes, bridges blown up, roads trenched, barracks
burnt, houses sandbagged ; but when Free State
troops appear there is nobody to meet them, the
Irregulars have all fled to the mountains. Cork
and Killamey were taken without a shot being
fired.”

Batty might wreak Republican vengeance on
me with his revolver if he liked. For once I
intended to say what I thought.

“ It’s a terrible racket, anyway,” said Mrs.
Daly diplomatically, “ and sure what’s the sense
of it all ? ” she added, changing her attitude with
disconcerting suddenness. “ Sure the English laws
were the best we ever had, with butter at two-and-
nine a pound and eggs at two pound a hundred.
When’ll we see the like of that again ? ”

“Never,” I replied with conviction.

“Mad altogether they are,” said Mrs. Daly,
summing up the flower of the Irish Republic ;
adding, in a sepulchral whisper in my ear, as I
rcffle to take my departure, “ The Black and Tans
were angels compared to them.”

♦ 9fc ♦

Nothing amazed me more, in our astonishing
war of independence, than that anybody should

MIST AND GLOOM 21 7

be found, on either side, willing to die for such a
damp and miserable land.

Day after day of driving mist and wailing wind
wrapped me, like the skies, in impenetrable gloom.
It might have been a particularly inclement
December instead of the height of summer. There
were no longer any seasons. Winter, spring and
summer in that year of dismal happenings were all
alike. Sometimes vdnd alone, sometimes rain ;
more often wind and rain together ; as soon as
one decreased, the other increased in intensity.

I envy people who are impervious to weather.
They are not uncommon. In London once I
knew a woman who was not even aware of a pea-
soup fog — ^an event which to me blotted out not
only all hopes of this world, but of the next. Day
after day as I sat over the fire, hugged in complete
misery of soul, I found myself anticipating a future,
rapidly approaching, when nothing would remain
for IK all but to be trampled into the mud of
Ireland. Meanwhile, the days wore themselves
out with distressing monotony. If it were possible
to die of boredom I should have done so.

It was no use pretending that life was inter-
esting, because it wasn’t. The interminable day
began at the latest possible moment — ^by old time.
In a country where there is no summer and time
is of no account, my attitude has always been one of
“no surrender” to legalized tampering with the
clocks. For once I was in complete agreement
with the Roman Catholic Church, which, in Kerry,
has always set its authority against what is known
as “ Protestant time.” Rather than conform to a
ridiculous custom imported from across the water,

I kept no time at all.

Something in the way of recording the passing
of the hours obtained in the kitchen. A gong

THE WINDS OF TIME

218

sounded. Meals appeared at intervals, and helped
to distinguish the day from the night. Otherwise
there was nothing to disturb a silence and a dark-
ness which had all the disadvantages, and none of
the advantages, of Eternity.

For weeks we saw no one, went nowhere, heard
nothing, did nothing worth recording. Every
morning we wakened to the sound of the rain
beating against the windows, the wind howling
in the chimneys. Between breakfast and limch
I made a pretence of being busy. From limch till
tea I abandoned the effort, staring blankly out of the
windows at the lake glooming under the leaden
sky, smoked cigarettes, listened to the ticking of
the clock, gazed prophetically into the future,
seeing myself, at the end of time, sitting crumpled
in a chair, like my grandmother-in-law whom
I foimd on her ninetieth birthday dissolved in
tears.

“ Whatever is the matter. Granny ? ” I inquired.

“ My dear,” she replied despairingly, “ I am so
depressed. I feel I have noting to live for.”

After tea I began to understand why people
take to drink. Lighting another cigarette, I would
make a prodigious effort and paddle in a mackin-
tosh round the dilapidated garden, picking sweet-
pea and unripe fruit, vaguely wondering how even
these had survived, in addition to the summer we
had had, the onslaughts of the rabbits and the
squirrels, the slugs and the birds which had made
the garden their permanent habitation.

Wet, and rather more depressed than when I
went out, I came in. Although too stuffy for a fire,
it wza too chilly to be without one. Khiving
exchanged my damp garments for a tea-gown, I
sank, with several books, on to a sofa. None of
them, however, could rouse me out of the profound

LAWLESSNESS AND RUIN 219

dejection which lasted from dinner till the moment
when I finally collapsed between the sheets of
my welcoming bed.

Day in, day out, nothing happened.

Was there ever so boring a war, without any
longer even the rumour of a battle to thrill us into
unbelieving excitement? For even the rumours
came to an end.

For weeks the countryside had regaled itself with
blood-curdling tales of dead and dying : “ Mick ”
was killed, “ Tim ” had lost a leg, and “ Pat ”
had had his face blown off, while de Valera had
been buried (several times) ; but gradually, as
“ Mick ” and “ Tim ” turned up unscathed and
on “ Pat’s ” face not even the trace of a scratch
could be discovered, the list of casualties diminished
and finally disappeared, while de Valera, alive or
dead, was no longer mentioned.

“ There’ll be great fighting yet,” said Dan
hopefully.

Meanwhile the bloodless war of raids and kid-
napping, of looting and destruction to roads and
railways, dragged on. In Tralee a gang of workers
set out on a breakdown engine to mend the line.
Immediately they were surroimded by armed
Republicans, who seized the engine and, after
chalking “ Go and be damned ” in large letters
on it, started it and sent it at full speed into Tralee,
where a signalman fortunately managed to divert
it into a siding, where it hurled itself into some
coal-trucks which it ground to powder.

After blowing up the Barracks in Killorglin — a.
process which seems to have been successfully
carried out without dislodging the jadcdaws from
the chimneys — the Irregulars, with rifles and
bundles of loot, trekked in stolen motors, on stolen
horses and bicycles, to the mountains, two days

220 THE WINDS OF TIME

before the arrival of the National troops ; leaving
behind them a trail of wanton destruction in the
shape of blown-up bridges, damaged roads, rail-
ways and telegraph wires — an ignoble flight gran-
diloquently described as an “ evacuation.” Soon,
one felt, there would be nothing left in Ireland to
destroy, while the bill for damages, mounting up
and up, must land the country in eventual bank-
ruptcy and so realize the dream of de Valera, who
is said to have announced that, if he could not rule
Ireland, he would ruin it.

For several Sundays the priest denounced our
local Republicans as murderers and thieves, appar-
ently without greatly disturbing their susceptibilities.
Eventually he aUuded to them as bosthoons (an
untranslatable Irish term of contempt) . A fusillade
of shots fired round his house at night showed that
the thrust had gone home. As he had no pos-
sessions, not even a bicycle, which they could
take, the firing of the shots was the only form of
retahation by which they could express their
annoyance.

Most of the priests, somewhat late in the day,
began to speak tibieir minds freely, another announc-
ing that “ the Red Gross was respected by every-
body in the world except naked savages and
Irislunen ” ; while at the reading of the Bishop
of Kerry’s Pastoral, in several churches the Irregu-
lars marched out as a protest of the denunciations
it contained of them.

A Daily Mail a fortnight old came at last to
hand. It described the National troops as “ march-
ing in the South from triumph to triumph.”

The particular form of triumph we experienced
was the arrival in our midst of about sixty imper-
fectly equipped youths of the age and general
appearance of Boy Scouts, under two officers, one

DEPRESSION

221

of whom was shot dead from behind a hedge a few
days after his arrival. Outside the town every
road was held by Republican bands, some of
whom were billeted in every house and farm for
miles around. If the National troops attempted
to leave the town they were ambushed, while at
night shots were fired at the Hall in which they
had temporarily fortified themselves. Completely
isolated, their presence in the town was o^y an
added embarrassment to the distracted shopkeepers,
whose supplies had long ago given out, and who,
when they sent for fresh ones to Tralee, had their
carts seized and plundered on the road by the
Irregulars, who proceeded to cut off even the
supplies of the town.

Rumours of the arrival of reinforcements, of
landings at different places on the coast, too often
proved false to be any longer accepted with any-
thing but incredulous silence. One day a boat
actually did appear on the far horizon of the bay.
No sail was ever viewed by castaways on a desert
island with greater excitement. As it drew nearer
it was seen to be a small fishing smack, while a
number of figures could be discerned huddled
together on the deck. “ The Free State reinforce-
ments at last,” the word went round. Immediately,
from both shores, voUeys of bullets rained upon
the water. From the coastguard station, the local
headquarters of the Irregulars, the rattle of machine-
guns made itself heard. The fishing smack con-
tinued on its course unscathed for some time, when
suddenly it seemed to have stuck on a sandbank
in the middle of the bay. The tide was going
out, the dusk was creeping up ; the pitiless rain
descending in solid sheets blotted out the mystery
ship from further view. In the early dawn it crept
up the bay and discharged at Ballykissane its

222 THE WINDS OF TIME

hapless band of school teachers, who had gone
from Dublin some weeks before to learn Irish at
Cahirciveen, where, finding themselves completely
stranded, they had chartered a fishing smack to
bring them round the coast somewhere on their
way to Dublin. Later in the day I came upon
them in Killorglin, black-coated, some of them
top-hatted, looking like the pictures of the Pilgrim
Fathers landing in the Mayflower ; wet to the
skin, and wearing the bedraggled aspect which a
night in the open imparts, even under the most
promising conditions, to most people. Spent as
they had spent it, in an open boat, on a sand-
bank, in a torrential downpour, without food or
drink, fired at from both shores, uncertain as to
whether they would ever be able to effect a landing
at all, it was perhaps not surprising to find that,
however much Irish they had acquired at the
holiday College at Cahirciveen, the language with
which the Dublin school teachers were expressing
themselves in Killorglin, far from being ihe Erse
of the pure-blooded Gael, was indistinguishable
from that usually associated with the expression
of the feelings of the outraged English.

After long weeks, barren of incident, devoid
even of rumour, came news of a devastating
description : Arthur GriflBth was dead and Michael
Collins had been shot in an ambush in Cork,

The Republicans, drunk with patriotism and
hate, had done to death the most romantic of their
coimtrymen. Fate had removed the ablest, almost
the only statesman in Ireland. Could a country
buffeted by such misfortunes survive the anarchy
into which we were daily sinking deeper?

The following, issued by the Army Chief after

AN APPEAL 223

Michael Collins’ death, strack at any rate a cour-
ageous and hopeful note :

To THE Men of the Army —

Stand calmly by your posts. Bend bravely and
undaunted to your work. Let no cruel act of
reprisal blemish your bright honour. Every dark
hour that Michael Collins met since 1918 seemed
but to steel that bright strength of his and temper
his gay bravery.

You are left each inheritors of that strength and
that bravery. To each of you falls his unfinished
work. No darkness in the hour, no loss of courage
will daimt you at it.

Ireland ! The Army serves strengthened by its
sorrow.

R. M. Malocatha,

Chief of the General Staff.

CHAPTER XX

ANOTHER JOURNEY AND SOME BATTLES

I N the autumn I had to go to Dublin. I was
fortunate in getting up during a temporary
lull in hostilities on the line, but had to spend a
night in the filthiest of hotels in Limerick. The
hair-combings of the last occupant of the room were
stiU in the dressing-table drawers, which also con-
tained a dirty collar and some empty cigarette-
boxes. Flinging the drawers into the passage, I
got into bed, where both feet went through the
tattered sheets. No sooner had I put out the light
than firing started in the street. Bullets whizzed
in every direction. I looked under the bed with
the idea of taking cover, but decided I would rather
die on top than among the sweepings of the room
which, in the course of years, had accumulated
rmdemeath it.

In the morning I went to the bathroom. When
I pointed out to the maid that there was no lock
on the door she replied, “ The way the cormtry is
nobody do be troubling about a bath, but if they
do, sure you’ve only to sing or whistle so they’d
know there’s somebody in it.”

I thought of my Aunt Frances Power, who on
getting up one morning found the house on fire.
Ringing She bell, she told the maid to inform the
gardener of the fact, and proceeded herself to her
bath as usual. I was about to follow the family
precedent for cleanliness at all costs and to get

224

SHOTS IN DUBLIN

225

into the hotel one, when a colony of cockroaches,
apparently alarmed by the unusual sound of
running water, scuttled out from underneath it.
The scream I emitted, far from scaring people away
from the bathroom, had the effect of bringing all
the “ Commercials ” out of their beds into it,
where it was (not unreasonably) supposed a murder
was being committed. In the commotion which
resulted I fled precipitately back to my room and,
unwashed, into the first available train.

In Dublin I came in for another battle. The
Hibernian Hotel, in which I was staying, having
applied for military protection. Free State soldiers
were billeted on the top storey. In the middle of
the night an attack was made on them by Irregulars.
For about half an hour shots were exchanged,
soldiers tore up and down the stairs, maids shrieked
on the landings. I locked my door and sandbagged
the bed with suitcases and pillows. In the morning
I found, to my surprise, no damage whatever had
been done to the hotel by any of the combatants,
both sides having concentrated their fire on the
manager’s motor in the yzird which my bedroom
window overlooked. “ Them lads are very quiet,”
said the waiter, as he brought me my breaJkfast ;
“ they wouldn’t like to be destroying anything.”

After a week in Dublin, Lady O’Connell, who
was also staying at the Hibernian and who was
anxious to return to ELillarney, and I decided to
make a push for home, in spite of the protestations
of our friends and relations.

As far as Limerick Junction the journey, if not
distinguished by any undue haste, was, on the
other hand, devoid of unusual incident. Arriving
an hour and a half late, we dallied for another
hour in the station, while the oflBcials made up
their minds whether they would venture any farther

W.T,

226 the winds of time

or not. Ultimately, after changing into another
train, we set off at a crawl for Buttevant over
temporarily restored bridges and railway lines
which, tom up in the night, were relaid every few
days, only to be tom up again on the following
night ; the damage perpetrated by the Republicans
being encouraged, if not actually inspired, by
enterprising car-drivers who were making colossal
fortunes, conveying passengers and their luggage
from one station to the next and who, at Buttevant,
were waiting in massed formation to fall upon us.
The train being unable to proceed any farther
owing to the destruction of a bridge, we had no
choice but to transfer ourselves to an outside car,
and to drive the seven miles to Mallow behind a
decrepit horse in a drenching mist.

At no time a hive of activity, Mallow, the junc-
tion connecting all the lines in the South of Ireland,
presented a lamentable spectacle of decay. The
magnificent ten-arch bridge across the Blackwater
had been blown to pieces. The dingy hotel where
we spent a dismal night was situated in the main
street of the town, amidst the cmmbling ruins of
such civilization as remained after the previous
year’s burning by the Black and Tans, followed
by the bombs and bullets of the Free Staters
and Republicans, whose favourite battle-ground it
seemed to have since been. The windows of the
cofiee-room were riddled with bullet-holes ; the
floor was carpeted in cmmbs ; two commercial
travellers, with pained expressions on their faces,
lay in profound slumber on the only two arm-
chairs in the room ; on an ink-stained writing-
table a Strand Magazine of 1899 served as a literary
link between Mallow and the outer world.

After a night of indescribable discomfort, the
next morning dawned, if. anything, somewhat

THE WAR ZONE

227

wetter than the preceding day. After breakfast
we started in a hired motor-car, the driver of
which, we were given in confidence to understand,
was an Ulster man who had deserted from the
British Army, been discharged from the Republican,
and was about to offer his services to the Free
State : a military record which inspired us with
complete confidence in the resourcefulness of his
character. Avoiding the main roads, which for
several weeks had been completely blocked, we
arrived, by a circuitous route over a mountain, at
Millstreet, where our inquiries for the road to
Killamey were met with derisive shrieks.

“ If you can lepp and you can swim you may
perhaps get there ; not otherwise,” we were told.
“ Every bridge is down and every road is blocked
since the fighting on Sunday.”

Conscious of proficiency both in “ lepping ” and
swimming, we pushed imdaunted on our way ;
running almost immediately into a flying column
of Free State troops, who stopped us and demanded
the driver’s permit. They were covered with mud,
weary and war-worn, having been fighting for two
days.

“ You will meet Irregulars farther on,” said the
officer. “ As you are only ladies they may not
take your can; if you had men with you they
would certainly do so.”

Bidding him good-bye, we charged with thrilled
expectancy into the war-zone, an old man who
subsequently directed us adding to our growing
Kcdtement by informing us that the “ Free
Starters ” had gone back and the “ Publicans ”
were on ahead.

Whether the latter were engaged in burying
their dead, the number of which, according to the
Free Staters, was alm<»t past calculation, or whether

THE WINDS OF TIME

228

they were concealed behind the hedges, we never
discovered. The disappointing fact remained, we
never saw even one member of the phantom army
in whose track we were supposed to be following,

“ Are you all mad here ? ” I inquired of a group
of men we next came upon, contemplating a gaping
void in the middle of a village street, in front of
which the car suddenly pulled up, only just in
time to prevent our taking a wild leap into the
river swirling in the precipitous depths beneath.

“ More than half of us,” was the cheerful reply,
as a couple (presumably of the sane section) ad-
vanced with advice and directions to the driver,
whom they conducted down a muddy declivity
leading to the river, into which the car plunged,
while we crawled, clinging to the parapet, over a
narrow footway on to the other side. When nearly
across, the engine of the car, which had been
gradually getting into deeper water, suddenly
stopped. Our hearts sank. Complete silence fell
on the spectators for a moment ; after which the
entire population of the village, sane and insane,
rushed to the rescue, throwing down stones and
eventually hauling the car into shallower water,
where the engine was restarted.

Having regained the road, we next found our-
selves up against a gigantic tree, prostrate across
our path, its branches sawn in such a fashion as to
form snags, between or underneath which it did
not seem possible for any vehicle to pass. But
our motor-driver came up to our expectations in
the matter of ingenuity, and by lowering the wind-
screen and keeping his head to the level of the
steering-wheel, advancing and reversing every few
inches, the car emerged triumphantly, after a good
quzirter of an hour’s manoeuvring, on the other side.
It was the first of many similar obstructions, some

TERROR AND DESPAIR

229

of which we struggled under, some of which we
squeezed our way round, and others which we
avoided altogether by turning in at the gates of
private demesnes and bumping our way through
farm-yards, the walls of which had been pulled
down by cars preceding us : experiences so un-
nerving that at Killamey the driver dumped our
luggage down in the middle of the street and
refused to proceed another yard.

Lady O’Connell was within reach of her home,
but I had another eighteen miles to go. At the
local garages all requests for a car to continue my
journey proved useless. Only by aeroplane, I
was told, could anybody hope to arrive at KLillor-
glin ; “ every bridge is down and all the telegraph
posts and the wires twisted in and about them.”

After over an hour spent in frantic appeals, the
owner of a horse and car was finally prevailed
upon to undertake the drive in consideration of a
sum exceeding the first-class railway fare to Dublin.

For the first few miles we made our way through
Lord Kenmare’s demesne, over the grass, down on
the shore of the lake, where the horse had to be
led between the rocks and where the wheels of
the car sank deep into the sand and gravel. After
being almost bogged in a bohereen leading into
another demesne, which we drove through, we
proceeded for about a mile on a side road, when
we encountered a broken bridge. A precipitous
descent into a wood, across the river, over a field
into a lane, on for a mile or two over trenches,
getting off the car every five minutes, occasionally
having to take the horse out and drag it over felled
trees and down into ditches ; and then, the mc»t
formidable river we had yet met, with, on the
opposite riiore, an insurmoimtable bank topp«i
with a barbed-wire fence. Seeing no possibility

THE WINDS OF TIME

230

of manceuvring this, we drove to a cottage, where
a young woman came out and directed us.

“Drive down the bank by the bridge and go
under the farthest arch, and tihen drive in the river
for a bit until you come to a slope in the bank, and
you’ll see a way up on the other side.”

An old man came out of the cottage and offered
to come with us. I walked with him, while the
horse and the car started down the river. We
talked the usual platitudes, when suddenly, seizing
me by the arm, he exclaimed, “ Oh, God, aren’t
the times terrible ? ” *

“ Indeed they are,” I replied fervently.

He broke into sobs. “ Oh, God ! ” he cried.
“ Oh, God ! my only son, he’s on the rim, and if
they get him they’ll shoot him ... I can’t shtop
talking of it . . . That young girl you saw just
now, she’s my daughter. She’s come all the way
from England to mind me, but sure, nobody can
mind me now. ... I can’t shtop talking, and
to-morrow they’re taking me to the asylum. . . .”

Looking back, after I had bidden him good-bye
and climbed among the broken masonry up the
clifiF-like side of the tumbled arch, I could see him
still standing by the lonely shore, his hands clasped
in mental torture ; “ Oh, God ! oh, God ! ” echo-
ing in my ears as we drove on in the fading twilight
on the deserted road ; his tragic figure leaving
in one’s memory an unforgettable impression of
Ireland’s madness and despair.

It was dark when we finally arrived at Ard-na-
sidhe, having been five hours on the road. When
it is realized that not a single obstruction we
encountered after leaving Mallow would have
presented the slightest difiiculty to a lorr5dul of
soldiais armed with a few planks and a couple of
saws, the imbecility of the tactics of the Irregulars,

MAD HAVOC

231

which merely caused delay and inconvenience to
civilians, can hardly be understood. Yet for
months past bands of able-bodied youths had been
engaged in destroying bridges and blocking roads
all over the South of Ireland with no other result.
As soon as one road was cleared by the Free Staters
another was obstructed, a work of devastation
which, one felt, would only cease when eveiy tree
in the country had been felled and every bridge
laid low.

Meanwhile, we are a philosophical and long-
suffering race, and if on my journey I endured
untold fatigue and discomfort, on the other hand
I added considerably to my knowledge of the
geography of my native land, which I came to
realize was not a land at all but a vast waterway
consisting of wide and rushing rivers, connected
with each other by occasional strips of road and
boggy fields ; while if ever I had to face the journey
again under the same conditions — ^which heaven
forbid ! — ^instead of a trunk and a hatbox my
luggage would, I decided, consist of a collapsible
boat, a cross-cut saw and two deal planks, equip-
ment which no traveller in Ireland shoTild be
without in the course of another civil war.

CHAPTER XXI

AN UNWELCOME DELIVERANCE

“ T T AVE you nearly finished fighting ? ” I

Xn inquired one evening of three Irregulars
whom I met strolling down the front avenue, after
partaking of tea in my kitchen.

“ No, we’re only just beginning,” one of them
replied hopefully.

“ Are you crazy ? ” I asked.

“ Only Irish,” he replied.

“ The same thing,” I suggested.

They laughed and proceeded towards the gate,
their rifles slung across their shoulders, cigarettes
in their mouths.

It is impossible, it has been said, to be serious
in Ireland without being ridiculous. The Irreg-
ulars were a proof of the accuracy of this state-
ment. For Irishmen they were quite serious. I
say for Irishmen, for the Irish are never . serious
in the way the English are serious ; the tongue of
an Irishman, when he speaks, being usually in
his cheek, while the tongue of an Englishman
remains in the exact spot destined by Nature for
its reception. As far, however, as an Irishman’s
sense of humour allows him, the Irish Republican
is serious. He believes to this day in his principles
and believes in his readiness to die for them, with-
out bdng unduly desirous of putting himself to
the unpleasantness of the test. But, unlike the
revolutionary of other lands, he has his lighter

232

UNWELCOME VISITORS 233

moments when he is ready to exchange pleasantries
with the people he is plundering.

I was fortunate so far in not having, like many
of my neighbours, Irregulars actually billeted in
the house. All those, however, who actually had
to entertain those unwelcome guests testified to
their extreme adaptability. When five of them

arrived one night at the M ’s, demanding

accommodation, the parlourmaid refusing to let
them upstairs in their dirty boots, they not only
removed them but took up the stair carpets. As

Mr. M was leaving the house the next mo rnin g

he heard his cook informing them : “ You can
have your breakfast or you can have your dinn er,
but I’m not going to give you both.” When he
returned some days later, after they had evacuated
the house, he found everything intact, even to the
silver on the sideboard.

All the same, signs were not wanting that, with
their ever-increasing requirements, the Iixegulars
were growing more and more unwelcome as un-
invited guests, not only in country houses but in
farms and cottages. And nobody was more pain-
fully aware of the fact than the wandering brigand
himself, who, as he laid himself down on the bed
he had obtained by force, and ate the breakfast
unwillingly prepared for him, must often have been
overcome with the “ nobody loves me ” feeling,
to which even the most popular of people are at
times subject. Signs of war-weariness, though
never expressed, I gathered were visible at these
strange parties in the kitchen, where, wet and
bedraggled, the belligerent youth of Ireland regaled
itself on tea and eggs at the expense of an
unsympathetic population.

“ You’d be sorry for them,” says Bridget, “ they
look so dying, but sure why can’t they have sense

THE WINDS OF TIME

234

and go home ? ” A solution of their troubles, as
well as of ours, which showed, alas ! no sign of
materializing at the moment.

Like the Belgians awaiting in their devastated
land the coming of the Allies, we awaited our
deliverers from the bondage of boredom.

When they came it was at 3 a.m., the hour at
which one’s vitality is proverbially at its lowest.

It was six weeks since we had last been raided
by the Republicans. The household was sleeping
peacefully when the familiar knocking at the door,
which we had almost forgotten, broke ominously
once more on the stillness of the night. I turned
on the light and awaited developments. In due
coiuse, Maria, the parlourmaid, attired in a
mackintosh over her nightgown, presented herself,
according to precedent, at my bedside, announcing
in sepulchral tones that the house was surrounded
with men.

“ Wliat do they want this time ? ” I inquired
in a resigned voice.

“I’m svue I couldn’t say,” replied Maria;
“ they’re Free Staters.”

“ Free Staters ! ” I exclaimed, “ at last, our
deliverers ! ” For weeks we had been awaiting
their arrival, rapturously anticipating the end of
Republican raids, the commandeering of our
provisions and our property.

“ You can open the door at once. I am de-
lighted to see them. Tell them I will be down in
a minute.”

Maria, who was a determined Republican, left
the room with an ak of outraged indignation. I
was glad of an opportunity at last of putting her
in her place. I had always told her the day of
reprisals would come. All the same, I wished it
hadn’t come in the middle of the night ; and as

EARLY MORNING

235

I put on a fur coat and tidied my hair I found
myself marvelling at the strange unrespon^iveness
of one’s attitude towards anybody who delivers
one from anything at 3 a.m. in a hard November
frost.

Ashamed of my ingratitude, I put all the en-
thusiasm I could muster into my greeting of the
officer awaiting me in the hall.

“ I’m delighted to see you,” I remarked politely,
but untruthfully. “ Won’t you come in ? What
can I do for you ? ”

He was a tall, gaunt, dilapidated-looking youth,
and before replying to my fervent welcome he
lighted a cigarette.

“ Have you any Irregulars concealed on the
premises ? ” he inquired aggressively, in a strong
Belfast accent.

“ Not at the moment,” I replied, decidedly
nettled at his manner ; “ if you had come some
weeks ago you would have foimd plenty concealing
themselves on the premises. I am not in the habit
of concealing them.”

“ This place has a bad reputation,” he remarked,
looking at the ceiling.

“For what ? ” I inquired.

“ For harbouring rebels,” he replied.

“ If you call harbouring rebels having your
house forcibly, entered by armed men, then no
doubt the reputation is justified,” I replied
indignantly.

“ I shall have to search the premises,” he
announced.

“ You can search the outbuildings as much as
you like,” I said. “ There are no men in this
house at all.” I opened the hall door. “ The
gardener has the keys of the outhouses. He lives
over the garage in the yard.”

THE WINDS OF TIME

236

Fortunately he seemed to consider my word
sufficient guarantee, for he passed out of the open
door and was swallowed up in the blackness of
the night, I returned to bed, wondering how
much Maria had heard of our conversation.

The next morning when I came down to break-
fast I rang the bell.

“ You’ve forgotten the milk,” I said to Maria.

“ There isn’t any,” she replied ; “ the cows have
not been milked. Jerry was arrested last night.”

I was completely taken aback, but the sight of
Maria’s triumphant face had a steadying effect on
my outraged feelings.

“ Surely Dan could have milked them,” I re-
marked, without the slightest display of emotion.

“ Dan was arrested too, and Mike and Mickeen
— everybody’s gone,” said Maria, flouncing
dramatically out of the room.

I drank my coffee black, and repaired to the
kitchen, where I found the cook twisting her apron
into knots.

“ Shwept, the whole lot, every mother’s son of
them,” she exclaimed. “ It’ll be the women
next ; consecration camps, same as in the African
war, and everyone dyin’ of fever ”

“ Don’t be ridiculous,” I said ; " the kettle is
boiling over. It must be a mistake. They’ll all
come back in a day or two.”

“ Never,” she sobbed ; “ it’s shot they’ll all be.
Mrs. Sweeny and Mrs. Moynihan have been wait-
ing to see you since eight o’clock — the poor things,
it’s crazy they are about Jerry and Dan.”

In the servants’ hall the two mothers were
sitting in front of the fire, rocking themselves
backwards and forwards.

“ Oh, Ciod ! me poor innocent boy,” cried Mrs.
Sweeny, “ him that’s never done anything but

ANGELS AND INNOCENTS 237

milk your ladyship’s cows, and go to Mass on
Sundays, and help his poor old mother.”

I tried in vain to console her,

" They’ll shoot him for sure, the bloody mur-
therers,” she wailed ; “ the Black and Tans were
gintlemm compared to the likes of them.”

“ Angels they were,” exclaimed Mrs. Moynihan.
“ Never once did a Tan come near me house or
even look at one of me boys ; while last night
didn’t hundreds of them blashted Free Stagers break
in and bring away me poor innocent Dan that
never did a thing to anybody in all his life, and
didn’t they steal his rifle and all his bullets into
the bargain ? ”

“ Then he had a rifle ? ” I remarked.

“ Of course he had a rifle,” said Mrs. Moynihan.
“ Sure all the boys around have them, but never
once did he fire it, not even in all the fighting
he’d been in ; the quietest boy in the world is
Dan, and never one to kill or murther.”

“ A bit of the railway line they found in the field
behind the house,” sobbed Mrs. Sweeny; “ tearing
up the railway, they said Jerry was, him that niver
went within a mile of it.”

“ How did the line get into your field ? ” I
inquired.

“ Indeed and I couldn’t say, it must have been
some blackguard put it there. ‘ I swear to God
I’m innocent,’ said Jerry, and never a lie did he
teE in his life, whisha God help us,” wiping her
eyes in her shawl.

“ What axe we to do about it all ? ” I asked,
when finally their sobs and laments showed signs
of abatii^.

“ If your ladyship will go to town and see the
Gineral Commanding,” suggested Mrs. Moynihan,
“ a word from yourself would get them off.”

THE WINDS OF TIME

238

“ I don’t think it would have any effect,” I
replied. “ I don’t know the General, and this
army isn’t like the British Army.”

“ Ah, sure, that was the fine army,” excleiimed
Mrs. Sweeny, “ and all the Ginerals in it brothers
and cousins to your ladyship, and the Captains
and the Colonels that’d be staying here in the
house, the innocent crayturs, fishing in the river
and going off with their sticks in the motor-car to
the golf Hnks, with no thought of war or murther
in their hearts.”

“ Let Erin remember the days of old,” I
suggested.

“ Ah ! thim were the grand days,” lamented
Mrs. Moynihan.

It was five miles to the town, and every motor
and horse and trap having been long ago removed
by the Republicans, I had to cover the distance on
foot.

“ I want to see Brigadier-General Malone,” I
said to the sentry posted outside the hall, the
windows of which were protected with sandbags
and library books, for which so different a destiny
had been anticipated by the late Mr. Carnegie, to
whose munificence the erection of the building had
been originally due.

“ Tom,” shouted the sentry, “ find the Brig.
There’s a party wants to see him.”

There are few things I resent more than being
alluded to as “ a party ” ; but the five-mile walk
had broken my spirit and I collapsed meekly on
a bench in an otherwise empty room, while a dili-
gent search was made for the “ Brig.,” into whose
presence I was eventually conducted. He was a
tall, hatchet-feiced youth, with a war-worn ex-
pression ; bul^ unlike my visitor of the previous
evening, his accent was of the South ajid his manner

THE COWS WAIT

239

sympathetic. Seating myself in the chair he offered
me, I stated my mission.

“ All of the men you mention were examined
this morning,” he replied ; “ their explanations
were extremely unsatisfactory. We have reliable
information that Sweeny is responsible for a great
deal of the damage done to the railway line, a
portion of which was found in his field, while
arms and mumtions were found under Moynihan’s
bed.”

“ I don’t mind so much about Moynihan and
the others,” I said. “ I can do without gardeners
for a day or two, but you really must let out Jere-
miah Sweeny. I have three cows waiting to be
milked. You have taken not only all my men,
but every available one in the neighborhood.
The cows must have someone to look after them.”

“ Sweeny has a bad record.”

“ There are others with worse.”

“We must put a stop to this sort of thing.”

“ When I tell you that a motor and four bicycles
have been stolen from my house, that several of
my trees have been cut down, and all my apples
and onions taken, that I have been raided seven
times and have had armed men coming for meals
to my house for months, you will perhaps under-
stand that I am even more anxious than you to
bring this business to an end. But it won’t help
matters in the least if, in addition to my other
losses, my three cows are dead by to-morrow.”

As Brigadiers go, he was of a type previously
unknown to me. But he was Irish — in other
words, he was human.

My journey home on a horse-car, with Jerry
seated triumphantly on the other side, was in the
nature of a Royal progress.

The Sweaay family, I gathered, were dedicating

THE WINDS OF TIME

240

what remained of their existence on earth to prayer
and intercession to heaven on my behalf.

Mrs. Moynihan, on the other hand, regarded me
coldly when I passed her on the road. Every day
she went to watch Dan through the railings, peeling
potatoes for his captors’ dinner, inside the barbed-
wire entanglements surrounding the Carnegie Hall.

CHAPTER XXII

COLLAPSE OF THE CIVIL WAR — COOKS AND THE FREE
STATE ARMY

A t last, in 1923, the Civil War petered out.

The Irregulars, vanquished and disheart-
ened, acting unconsciously on Bridget’s suggestion,
“ got sense and went home.”

Unfortunately Bridget hereelf did likewise. I
think she found life in Kerry too dull when the
raids came to an end. Like all Irish maids, she
was a Republican at heart, being firmly convinced
that once Ireland became independent the position
of mistress and servant would be reversed : I
would be doing the cooking while she reclined on
the drawing-room sofa with a cigarette in her
mouth and her hand on the bell, the customary
attitude, she imagined, of all employers, including
myself.

“ The rich will be poor and the poor will be
rich,” she was fond of asserting, which was as far
as she had got in the principles of Marxian economics.

Meanwhile I hunted distractedly for a cook. I
heard of a marvellous one who had been in America
and who had been engaged by a Killamey hotel
for the previous tourist season. Unfortunately
the fighting had frightened the tourists away and
the hotel had closed down. The cook was staying
with relatives in the town and was looking for a
job. Nobody, however, least of all myself could
afford to pay her the wages she was asking.

THE WINDS OF TIME

242

Eventually she went to the Barracks in Tralee,
which the Free State Army had taken over from
the British. As it was a new army with no tra-
ditions, the officers, originally recruited from the
small farmer and shopkeeping class, and who had
mostly risen from the ranks, had had no opportunity
of acquiring the manners and customs of polite
society. But some of them at any rate were
anxious to adopt them.

“ Things are a bit rough in this mess,” the
President said one day to the Commandant; “I
think we ought to have serviettes for dinner.”

“ Anything for a change,” said the Commandant,
who thought “ serviettes ” was a new dish ; “ I’m
sick to death myself of pig’s head and cabbage.”

With the advent of the American cook the Mess
felt it was moving in the right direction, and as,
previous to going to America, she had had experi-
ence with the British Army both in Cork and
Fermoy, the President looked to her for guidance.

On teiking up her duties she was horrified to find
that the officers were in the habit of having an
enormous dinner at 3 p.m., followed by “ high tea ”
in the evening. She explained to the Mess Presi-
dent that a light Itmch at 1.30, tea at 5 p.m. and
dinner at 8 p.m. was the usual procedure, not
only in armies but in “ the best circles ” in society.
Reluctantly the officers fell in with the prescribed
schedule. The day after her arrival, as she was
preparing to send up the lunch at 1.30 as agreed
upon, the Commandant sent down for his break-
fast. Indignantly she sent a message by the orderly
saying she could not possibly attend to his breakfast
as she was getting the officers’ lunch ready. Where-
upon the Commandant burst into the kitchen in
his pyjamas and, pointing a revolver at her head,
asked was she going to get his breakfast or was she

COOKS 2^2

not? Abandoning the lunch, she hastily began
frying eggs and bacon.

At five o’clock, having sent up tea, she was
about to partake of her own when a message came
down that the officers were “ roaring for pork
chops with their tea ” ; whereupon she put on
her hat and, seizing her suitcase, marched into the
messroom ; and after informing the astonished
officers that “ no army in the world had pork
chops with its tea,” walked out of the barracks.

Of the many appHcations I received from cooks,
most were evasive on the subject of their cooking.
What references they enclosed were generally
from parish priests to the effect that they were
regular and zealous in the performance of their
religious duties — ^which, however helpful it might
prove in the next world, would, I felt, be of little
help in the mixing of sauces or the giilling of cut-
lets in this one. One suggested I should send her
my photograph before she decided whether she
would accept my situation or not, and another,
whose persistent application I had already twice
refused, sent me the following letter :

“ Dear Lady Gordon,

“ I have your letter. I am sorry I did not suit.
Some said I was not grand enough to please you.
I don’t be well always to be shure you heard. I
wish people would stop telling tales of me. All
the world have throuble — Lady Gordon I was one
year where there was 400 men of Honor the
barracks at BallincoUig one of them said Mary

0 Sullivan if you want to get married you will get
your choice of four himdred men Thanks be to
the Queen of Heaven I said it is a great word.
Lady Gordon the year of the pilgrimage to Lourdes

1 got better I have seen wonders. I am sure you

THE WINDS OF TIME

244

will believe me I am praying a good deal to the
Queen of the most holy Rosary to make me well
With love from Mary O’Sullivan to dear Lady
Gordon.”

In the end I engaged a cook who came from
Cork, where she had been for three years with a
General, whom she described as “ a fright.” “ He
was great on French dishes, pill of chicken dyed
saffron and the like, and if they weren’t right he’d
roar at you,” she explained.

Judging by the pilaff de volatile which I subse-
quently traced in the cookery book as the origin
of the “ piU of chicken dyed saffron,” and which
she served to us one night, the General must have
done a “ power, of roaring ” in the three years of
her occupancy of his kitchen in Cork. Yet he sent
her out into the world with a “ character ” which
would have led me to suppose that I was engaging
a member of the Escoffier family, if I had not been
well versed in “ references ” from Cork, where I
imagine the inhabitants have unusually athletic
digestions, judging by their taste in cooking. As
she was the first I had heard of who wasn’t mad and
who at any rate understood the elementary prin-
ciples of her profession, I decided to keep her. She
had an original mind and the latent instincts of
an artist revealed themselves one day when I was
ordering dinner for some expected guests.

“ Is there gintlemen coming ? ” she inquired,
“ because I couldn’t put me heart into a savoury
for ladies.”

On one occasion I sent a cook to Cork — a Kerry
girl whom I had vainly tried to train in my own
house. Apparently she had a great success, for
when, a year or two later, she returned on a
holiday, she came to see me.

SUCH NOTIONS !

245

“ Do you remember them cheese balls you used
to say, my lady, were like lumps of lead ? ” she
asked.

I remembered them only too clearly.

“ Well then,” she remarked triumphantly,
“ they’re cracked about them in Cork ; whenever
there is company to dinner, ‘ Mary,’ says the
mistress, ‘ make us some of your delicious cheese
balls ! ’ ”

There is one thing to be said in favour of cooks
from Cork — they keep one thin and save one doing
cures. People who live in the South of Ireland
never have to go to Carlsbad or Kissingen for the
sake of their figures. A visit to Mrs. Magrath’s
registry office has the same effect, keeping them to
the end of their days wiry and brisk, in spite of
the tremendous teas they are bound to indulge in
to make up for the culinary deficiencies of lunch
and dinner.

Undoubtedly the root of our domestic difficulties
in Ireland lies in the fact that nobody really wants
to learn anything. Girls can seldom be induced
to train as kitchenmaids ; they always want to
begin at the top and not at the bottom of their
profession. Cooking, instead of being an art, is
looked upon merely as a tiresome method of earn-
ing enough money to pay for a passage to America.
Nobody is in the least interested in it. After
Uving for over three hundred years on potatoes,
the Irish are only aware of one way of cooking
them and are not always successful with that.
That you should require any variety in your food
is looked upon as eccentricity on the part of the
“ gentry,” while your ideas on cleanliness and tidi-
ness are generally designated as “ notions,” as I
discovered in the case of Hannah Maria, whom I
engaged as a between-maid soon after the arrival

246 THE WINDS OF TIME

of the new cook, and who was described by her
mother as “ rough but hardy, a regular mountain
galloper.”

The description was appropriate. Before break-
fast she galloped round the back premises. From
ten till twelve she galloped round the bedrooms.
After an hour of deafening trampling overhead, I
went upstairs on the morning of her arrival, and
told her it was neither necessary nor advisable to
do the bedroom grates in heavy and nailed boots.
The next morning she rose out of the ashes in the
grate in a pair of high-heeled, white canvas shoes.
Again I expressed my disapproval. She looked
surprised, but being obviously anxious to please
me, when I next met her on a wild stampede down
the passage I observed that the white shoes had
been partially black-leaded and now presented a
mottled surface suggestive of much-used blotting
paper.

To my comments on their distressing appear-
ance, I added some further criticism on the safety-
pins by which her skirt was held together at her
waist.

“ Sure I have no hips to hang it on,” she re-
marked.

I endeavoured to explain to her the system of
hooks and eyes, by which skirts are usually made
to adhere to even the flattest of figures.

“ Such notions as her ladyship have, to be sure,”
I heard her exclaiming to the housemaid as I
passed down the passage ; “ she must have got
them living in England.”

CHAPTER XXIII

DE VALERA — ^A WORLD TOtTR — CEYLON — ^HONG-KONG
—JAPAN — ^VANCOUVER ISLAND — ^THE ROCKIES —
THE C.P.R.

T he way the Bail (Irish Parliament) got down
to work, and the success with which it
grappled with the problems confronting it, must
have astonished the Unionists, who had always
proclaimed that the Irish were not fit to govern
themselves. No more Herculean task ever devolved
upon an untried and inexperienced group of legis-
lators than that of cleaning up the mess caused
by the Civil War. If, in the matter of the exe-
cution of the Irregular leaders such as Rory
O’Connor and Mellowes, as well as some of the
rank and file, they displayed the same severity
which they had resented in the British, on the
other hand they showed considerable moderation
under serious provocation and were never deterred
by craven fears of impopularity from facing their
obligations and responsibilities.

In the face of the misconceptions and the con-
fusion of ideals which prevailed in the Civil War,
when brother often actually fought against brother
and all Ireland was divided against itself, it must
be remembered that the issue at stake was not
so much, as people usually imagined, the Treaty
versus a Republic, but the question as to whether
any ordered or settled Government was going to
be at aU possible in Ireland. The defeat of the

247

THE WINDS OF TIME

248

Irregulars was not a defeat for the Republic, which
remains to this day the ideal of a large proportion
of the people. The Treaty having been ratified
in 1922 by a majority of seven in the Bail, the
Irish people had expressed their willingness to
accept it (if only as a temporary expedient). For
the subsequent substitution of the bullet for the
ballot Mr. de Valera was largely responsible. Re-
fusing to acknowledge the fact that, constitutionally,
he had been beaten, he proceeded to plunge Ireland
in aU the horrors of bloodshed rather than accept
the verdict of the polls.

In any country but Ireland de Valera would
be incredible. The secret of his original success
was largely due to his position as Professor of
Mathematics at Blackrock College. Uneducated
Ireland is always impressed with “ learning ” and,
although in no way intellectual, he possesses a
magnetic attraction for young men. Practically
unknown in Ireland outside Gaelic League circles,
he did not come into the limelight until after the
Easter Week rebellion. Acclaimed in 1917 as the
leader of the extreme Republicans, he has since
devoted his amazing gifts of rhetoric and persuasion
to devdoping all the slumbering passions of his
coimtrymen against England and against each
other. Just as it is not love of God but hatred of
the Pope which unites in a solid front aU the
Orangemen of the North, so, in the South, ani-
mosity to England and to each other is the binding
factor in Irish politics under his guidance. En-
couraging if he did not instigate the Civil War,
which was as unnecessary as it was cruel and
disastrous, he has invariably put Party before
Coimtry and used his influence against conciliation
and compromise. He no more wanted a settlement
over the Treaty in 1921 than he wants one of the

IN CEYLON

249

economic war to-day. A fanatic possessed of the
one idea of making Ireland politically and eco-
nomically independent of England, he has always
preferred to sacrifice the welfare of the country
and of everybody in it to calling a halt in the ruth-
less pursuit of his goal. Hopeless as a statesman,
he is an astute and skilful politician. And un-
fortunately he can argue the head off anybody.

He

There being no longer any necessity to remain
at home and “ hold the postern gate ” against the
enemy, I let Ard-na-sidhe in November 1925 and
went round the world, starting with a couple of
months in Ceylon, where I stayed with my cousins,
the Hugh Englands. Hugh was in command of
the Colombo, one of those “ ram you, damn you ”
first-class cruisers which are the pride of the Navy ;
and after a delightful Christmas at the famous
Galle Face Hotel we went up to Diyatalawa, the
Naval camp, where he had the Admiral’s bimgalow.
It was wonderfully situated, surroimded by moun-
tains, and the climate was perfect. There was a
good golf course which, to an indifferent player
like myself, presented alarming features in the shape
of snakes in the long grass and leeches in the ditches,
which should have had the effect of making one
drive a straight ball. Unfortunately I “ sliced ”
and “ pulled ” as usual, but infinitely preferred
losing the ball and the hole, as I usually did, to
following it in its perilous flights out of bounds.

From Diyatalawa we all went up to Nuwara
Eliya to stay with the popular G.O.C., Ccflonel
Higginson (of the Dublins), and his charming wife,
and from there I went to Irish friends, the Malcohn-
sons, who had a large tea estate at Dolosbage, and
afterwards on a wonderful motor tour of the island.

THE WINDS OF TIME

250

to the ruined city of Anuradapura, to Polanuruwa
and the tanks, as the huge artificial lakes several
miles long are called, to the astonishing rock of
Sigiri, through the jungle and up mountains on
terrifying zigzag roads looking down from dizzy
heights on to great distances of rolling country, with
lesser peaks and crags rising out of the blue mist.

If anything more lovely than Ceylon exists on
this earth I have never met it or heard of it ; while
as to the flowers — ^well, one of the advantages of
travelling is that on dismal days of leaden skies
at home one has only to shut one’s eyes to behold
again in vision the dazzling glory of cannas and
hibiscus, of poinsettas and bignonias, to recall the
tropical splendour of the Peradeniya Gardens, to
smell again the fragrant perfume of the frangipani
at the Temple gates of Kandy.

Early in March, another cousin, Noel Power
(now Mrs. Windeyer), joined me, and we pushed
off to China with every intention of getting to
Peking, a journey which, however, we did not
succeed in accomplishing, owing to the inevitable
Chinese war being in progress. Actual fighting
I don’t think would have prevented us at any rate
from making the attempt, but, at the time, the
tearing up of the railway lines seemed to have
been the chief occupation of the rival factions —
and this was a form of warfare with which we were
already too painfiiUy familiar to feel like sampling
it again in an unknown country and under con-
ditions fraught with considerably more alarming
perils than we were accustomed to in Ireland.

So we stayed in Hong-Kong for a fortnight
while awaiting a ship to Japan. We might as
well have been in Portsmouth Harbour, which,
indeed, in a fog, it greatly resembled. It looked
its best from the sea as we were leaving it, But

JAPAN 251

at any rate it was better than Shanghai, where we
fortunately were only obliged to put in twelve
hours.

Japan, on the other hand, was entrancing.
People said it was spoilt and that one should have
seen it twenty years before. To me it could never
have been more fascinating. The month we spent
there was one unceasing thrill. The delightful
little women klop-klopping in their wooden sandals
down the streets, their gaily coloured paper
umbrellas making of a wet day something cheerful
and romantic, had all the elfish charm of Fairyland.
In Kyoto one felt not only back in a vanished
age but on another planet, so completely did it
differ from that on which one habitually moved
and dwelt. The temples, unlike the churches and
cathedrals of Europe, shut in among noisy streets
full of clanging trams and hooting cars and ceaseless
traflBic, are set on lovely hill-sides or in sheltered
nooks, approached by broad flights of steps. Sur-
rounded by stately courts and shady gardens, with
stone and bronze lanterns, blossoming plum- and
cherry-trees, with lovely views of distant moun-
tains,- they breathe peace and repose and an
alluring simplicity which almost made me feel like
embracing the Shinto faith as, seated one day near
a shrine, I watched a Japanese family approach to
pay their morning homage to the Sun <^d. Up
the little hiU they pattered, the father in his black
kimono, the mother in a piuple one, her gaily
clad baby strapped to her back. Arrived at the
Shrine, the faAer rang a bell (to fidghten away
the evil spirits), clapped his hands (to attract the
attention of the God), uttered his simple greeting,
“Hail to Thee this day, August One,” put a
copper into a collection box the size of dustbin, and
away they all trotted.

THE WINDS OF TIME

252

But perhaps there are more complications in the
ritual than appeared that lovely spring morning
in Kyoto, and the less picturesque rites of the
Church of Ireland may after all be preferable to a
cult including, in addition to the worship of the
sun (which comes more or less naturally to anyone
like myself living in a rain-sodden country), the
worshipping of one’s usually impossible ancestors.
At any rate I do not feel sufficiently indebted to
mine to undertake providing their spirits daily with
rice pudding and whisky — the nearest equivalent
in Ireland to the regulation fare prescribed for
them in Japan — although as a matter of fact they
would be more than welcome to derive what
ghostly comfort they could from my own share of
these, to me, equally distasteful articles of diet.

After the restrained and austere beauty of the
Kyoto temples, with the delightfiil upward-curving
tilt of their roofs, the barbaric, lacquered splen-
dour of those at Nikko was bewildering. Without
apparent architecture, they seemed to consist of
ornament piled upon ornament. Anywhere else
but in their marvellous environment of mountain
and gigantic cryptomeiia their extravagance would
have seemed mere decoration gone mad. As it
was, one accepted them, rather dizzily, as char-
acteristic of the artificiality of a country one could
never hope to understand.

Japan is supposed to be the land of flowers, but,
strangely enough, there are practically no wild
ones, and we were too early for the irises, the lilies
and the lotuses of which one had heard and read
so much. The moimtains are unusually bare of
vegetation, which, however, is not surprising, as
they seem to be always falling down. At Miyano-
shita we saw one, the lower slopes of which had been
heavily cemented, presumably to keep it up on

THE ship’s gardener 253

end ; while out of another, which we ascended in
carrying-chairs, sulphur and steam poured from
cracks and fissures all aroxmd. We only came in
for one earthquake and that was not a serious one.
We were in a theatre in Tokio and were too thrilled
by the performance to pay much attention to it.
A long residence in Ireland has a steadying effect
on the nerves. Familiarity with battle, murder
and sudden death leaves one comparatively calm
in the face of mere upheavals on the part of Nature.

Twelve hideous boring days (owing to’ the differ-
ence in time there were two Thursdays in one
week) we spent on a grey and heaving ocean
ironically called Pacific instead of Horrific, which
would have been far more suitable, on our way
from Yokohama to Vancouver Island. The Em-
press of Australia on which we made the voyage
had been originally built for the Kaiser to tour in
round the world he proposed to conquer. She
was top heavy and rolled even on the few occasions
when there was no apparent necessity for her to
do so. And she was of such vast proportions that
one day a bewildered passenger, hopelessly lost
in the mazes of the Tudor Library, the Empire
boudoir, the Louis-Seize drawing-room, the
Georgian lounge, was heard to ask a passing
steward if he could tell her “ the way to the sea.”

Another story of the same liner which amused
me was of the Captain who one day stumbled upon
an individual in a new and strange uniform.

“ Who the hell are you ? ” he inquired, in the
affable style employed by sea captains in a hurry.

“ Please, sir, I’m the ship’s gardener,” was the
disconcerting reply.

In spite of the xmpleasantness of the weather
I was not actually ill, but one day I felt like it.
I retired to my cabin and rang the bell.

THE WINDS OF TIME

254

“ I think I’m going to be sick,” I said to the
stewardess, who looked horrorstruck at my remark.

“ I will tell the steward,” she replied haughtily.

“ I think I am going to be sick,” I said to the
latter when he arrived on the scene ; “ please bring
me a basin.”

The steward looked even more astonished.

“ I will tell the under-steward,” he remarked,
withdrawing hastily.

“ Please bring me a basin,” I said to the under-
steward who, after a long interval, put his head
through the door.

“ Oh,” he exclaimed, “ I will tell the cabin-
boy ! ”

By the time the latter arrived, with a cardboard
box tied up with pink ribbon, I had recovered,
but the episode left me with the feeling that I
had been guilty of some strange lapse; that on
an “ Empress ” liner people were not sick — or if
they were, they did not mention the fact to any-
body of higher rank than a cabin-boy. I was
glad to think I had not told the Captain, or the
“ Master at Arms,” as the policeman is called,
who lurks at night in the shadowy gangways ready
to pounce .on suspected thieves or lovers stealing
into cabins other than their own.

Apart from this curious tendency to look upon
sea-sickness as an unexpected and unnatural pro-
ceeding on an “ Empress ” liner, I have noting
but admiration to record of the C.P.R. “ There
are three perfect organizations in the world,” as a
fellow-passenger remarked, “ the Roman Catholic
Church, the Standard Oil Company ” (in which
I imagine he was personally interested) “ and the
Canadian Pacific' Railway.” I agreed enthusi-
astically with him. Nothing could have exceeded
die perfection of the arrangements made for one’s

RESTMGTIONS

255

comfort, or the courtesy of the charming young
men who, at every port, were awaiting one’s arrival
or departure.

Somewhere on our journey — I think it was at
Yokohama — I presented an official with half a
dollar and a superfluous trunk. Months after-
wards I found it in my cabin on board another
“ Empress ” liner at Quebec. When I expressed
my astonishment to the baggage officer, he said,
“ Why, whatever happens to luggage in your
country ? ”

“ In Ireland,” I replied, “ unless you get out at
every change and look after it yourself, in all prob-
ability you will never see it again,” and told him
the story of the Kerry man who, travelling for the
first time by train, got out at every station to see
if his “ litde thrunk ” was still in the van, tmtil
the exasperated guard at last remarked : “I wish
to God you were an elephant and then your little
thrunk would be attached to your person.”

Our funds were getting low, and on landing at
Victoria we went to a small hotel instead of to the
luxurious C.P.R. one. On the back of my bed-
room door was a notice saying, “ Dancing, singing
and laughing not allowed. Visitors of the opposite
sex strictly prohibited.”

At dinner, when we asked for a bottle of Bur-
gimdy, we were told that if we wanted drink of
any description we would have to go into the town
and get a permit costing two dollars, after which
we could procxire anything we required, but we
would have to partake of it (presumably silently
and alone) in our bedrooms, as drinking in public
was strictly verboten. Under the circumstances we
abandoned any idea of twining the vine leaves in
our hair.

Vancouver Island, ap^ from this peculiar form

256 THE WINDS OF TIME

of prohibition, was like Ireland on a larger and
more beautiful scale. The golden broom stretch-
ing for miles round Victoria against the blue sea
and snow-capped mountains was an unforgettable
sight. The “ Butchart ” rock garden was a
dream, and Maple Bay, where we stayed in a de-
lightful hotel, was, I felt, the only place I could
ever settle in if driven out of Ireland. But the
poverty in which people lived, and the unceasing
struggle for life, was distressing. “ What an extra-
ordinary number of garages there are here,” I
remarked to an inhabitant, pointing to innumerable
little wooden huts with tin roofs dotted about in
clearings of the forest.

“ Garages ! ” he exclaimed. “ Those are Aouses ! ”

Work, one heard, was unobtainable, except in
domestic service, and even that was scarce, as few
of the residents kept servants of any description,
while most of them, one gathered, lived by taking
in each other’s washing.

We came home through the Rockies, which I
found terrifying in their immensity, spending a few
days at Banff and visiting the world-famous Lake
Louise, the beauty of which, to me, was somewhat
marred by a nine-storeyed hotel on an asphzilted
shore. This, however, was what appealed most
to our fellow-tourists, who spent the limited time
at our disposal under its roof, while Noel and I
climbed the wooded slopes above the tiny lake,
which was of the most exquisite and indescribable
shade of blue and which lay tike a jewel in its
wondrous setting of mountain and glacier. Neither
sapphire blue nor jade green or any other des-
scription I have ever read can convey any idea
of the colour of tbe lakes and rivers of Canada,
the beauty of which can no more be put into
words than it can ever be forgotten by anybody

IMPERISHABLE IMPRESSIONS 257

who has once looked into their alluring ice-clear
depths.

Overwhelmed with the stupendous grandeur of
the scenery through which we passed, I sat in the
motor-coach on our return journey, speechless and
almost diz2y with wonder and admiration.

“ You bet it’s dandy” said an American seated
beside me, looking suddenly up from the book in
which he had been absorbed throughout the ex-
pedition, throwing a casual glance at the snow-
capped mountains rising to incredible heights
above the rushing waters of the incomparable Bow
River Valley.

We travelled as tourists and, as such, saw nothing
of the real life of the people in any of the countries
we visited. Our impressions were therefore super-
ficial and possibly valueless. Two, however, apart
from the scenery, remain in my memory : the
greatness of the British Empire, whose flag was
proudly waving in almost every port, and the
previously imreaiized preponderance of salt water
compared to land in this otherwise delectable
world of ours.

CHAPTER XXIV

A SAD FAREWELL — ^LISMORE — ^A MEET

O N my return from my travels I found Ireland
on top of the wave. People who had fled
the country were returning. Compensation was
being paid not only by the British Government
for damage done under the Black and Tan rigime,
but by the Free State for that caused by the Irregu-
lars. Out of the ashes of their former homes new
ones were arising, not so large but more convenient
and up to date. Ex-Unionists who had not been
burnt out were slightly envious.

Compared with other coxmties Kerry had not
fared so badly. No conditions had accompanied
the British compensation, but under the Free State
the money had to be spent rebuilding in Ireland.
All the damaged bridges and roads had been
restored. Money was plentiful and life was normal
once more. Colossal schemes in the shape of
Casinos and mammoth Hotels, fathered by Lord
Castlerosse and Mr. Harrington, a wealthy Ameri-
can who had settled near KiUarney, were in the
air. A syndicate of millionaires arrived on the
scene from New York and were rushed over Kerry.
Polo grounds, golf courses, country clubs with
swimming-pools and squash-racket courts were
indicated with a wave of the hand ; while a stag
hxmt by moonlight was staged for their benefit
the night before they left, intoxicated and enrap-
tured with the possibilities of the new Kerry. The

258

ARD-NA-SIDHE

SWAN SONG

259

fact that they were never seen or heard of again
in no way damped the enthusiasm of the promoters
of these fantastic schemes, who still live in hope
of the ultimate Americanization of the last spot
on earth suited to an experiment of the kind.

More promising were the Englishmen who,
attracted by the lowness of our Income Tax, were
fluttering round in search of bargains in the way
of houses with Ashing and shooting, one of whom
became the fortunate owner of Ard-na-sidhe.
Parting with it took an ever-increasing financial
strain off my mind, but it left a hole in my heart
which has never been filled. . . .

I have never gone back ; but sometimes, on
summer evenings, my spirit returns to the Wonder-
land of Kerry, wandering round the gardens I
made and loved, listening to the wind sighing in
the tall fir-trees, to the lake water lapping against
the rocks beneath the terrace wall, seeing in the
misty twilight Isles of Joy and Isles of Song dimly
outlined in the Western sea, murmuring in my
dream the farewell of the Tuatha-de-danaan, when
Nuada, the last of their chieftains, said to the con-
quering Milesian : “ We give you Ireland, but
since our hands have fashioned it we will not
utterly leave the country. We will be in the white
mist that clings to the motmtains ; we will be in
the quiet that broods on the lakes ; we will be in
the joy shout of the rivers ; we will be in the secret
wisdom of the woods. Long after your descendants
have forgotten us they will hear our music on sunny
raths, and see our great white horses lift their heads
from the mountain tarns and shake the rught dew
from their crested manes ; in the end they will know
that all the beauty in the world comes back to us
and their battles are only the echo of ours. . .

THE WINDS OF TIME

260

Lismore, where I set up house on leaving Kerry,
is in the County Waterford, but it never seems
to me to be in Ireland. The River Blackwater
which flows beneath my house comes, it is true,
from Kerry, but as it winds its way out towards
the sea it seems to acquire something of the smug-
ness of the Thames ; as it passes under the Castle
walls, something of the deadness of feudalism.

Once the home of the great Earl of Cork and
three times in the course of centuries burnt to the
ground, Lismore Castle, architecturally disfigured
in the early part of the nineteenth century by the
addition of meaningless “ Noiman ” battlements
and towers, still dominates the river above which
it rises impressively : but the soul has gone out
of it.

One of the many homes of the Dukes of Devon-
shire, it maintained for generations a certain
tradition of feudal splendour, only to acquire in
recent years, as the “ Lismore Estates Company,”
a commercial aspect hitherto unknown in the reck-
less armals of Irish landlordism One wing is let ;
the rest is the home, at fleeting intervals, of
Lord Charles Cavendish and his American bride,
Adele Astaire, of dancing fame. From time to
time the searchlight of journalism shines - fitfully
upon it, suggesting hectic revelry within its walls.
But that, one imagines, is only journalese ; at any
rate, if revelry obtains within the Castle precincts,
no soimd of it penetrates to a sadly disappointed
neighbourhood.

Though lacking in gaiety and vitality, Lismore
has charm and a peacrful serenity which make it
a restful retreat in the twilight of one’s life. If
nobody in it at times seems quite alive, on the
other hand nobody is wholly dead. The little
town is clean and firiendly, the neighbours, far and

COMPENSATIONS 261

wide, kind and pleasant ; the woods in autumn
are a glory of red and gold.

In my sheltered garden, flowers flourish as
they never did in storm-tossed Kerry. In spring
double cherries fling their creamy whiteness against
a sky of cloudless blue. By the river-bank masses
of rhododendrons blaze in June and the great flat
flowers of the purple Iris Kaempferii grow large as
saucers, while in the autumn scarlet oaks and
crimson maples stand out in flaming contrast to
the greyness of the clouds. Nowhere have I heard
birds sing so sweetly or so persistently, swans float
majestically on the clear brown water, herons n^t
in the tall tree-tops and stand contemplatively on
the wall above the weir, over which the tired river
gently falls with soothing murmurings.

Like Abraham Cowley my wish had always
been

ere I descend into the grave.

May I a small house and large garden have,

And a few friends and many books, both true.

Both wise and both delightfiil too !

The wish has been fulfilled.

Sometimes when things go wrong, when Death
brings sorrow and illness suffering, or when a
trusted friend instead of being true proves uit-
accountably false, I find consolation in books that
never fail, in flowers that never pall, and think
with unutterable horror of what life would be in a
London flat or in a cottage on the side of a tarmac
road.

■ With the exception of the few intimates who
really matter in one’s life I have as a rule found
places more satisfying than people, and, while I can
live quite happily for weeks on end without society,
existence without a garden is to me unthinkable.
Looking through old diaries I have sometimes

THE Wliros OF TIME

262

been amazed at the names I come across of people
I have met and known and utterly forgotten —
whereas someone has only to mention the name of
some place I have been to and immediately my
brain recalls — a branch of plum blossom by a
Japanese temple — a cypress against a snow-capped
mountain under a sky of cloudless blue — a sea-gull
dipping into a jade-green sea — a date-palm rising
out of the tawny gold of the African desert. Always
in my memory there is colour, and whatever hopes
I have of heaven are all of flowers of unimaginable
brilliance and fragrance. Meanwhile,

The sunset is not yet, the morn is gone;

Yet in our eyes the hght hath paled and passed ;

But twilight shall be lovely as the dawn

And night shall bring forgetfulness at last,
si:

If any readers get as far as this, they will be
astonished to find, in a book by an Irishwoman
about Ireland, no mention of hunting. The reason
for this strange omission lies not so much in the
fact that I have been writing about Kerry, one of
the few counties (if not the only one) in which
there is no hunting, as in the more remarkable one
that I have not only never hunted but have never
wanted to. But as I now live in a part of Ireland
where people hunt (to describe it as a hunting
centre might be misleading), I feel some allusion
to the subject wiU be expected of me. All I can
do, however, is to describe a meet at which I once
played, I fear, an inglorious part.

It was a bleak December day with drenching
showers. We met at the house of a neighbour,
where we partook of coffee which was hot and
pleasant and must have been comforting to the
members who had hacked for several miles in the
rain and were endeavouring to dry their dripping

HUNTING

263

garments in front of the drawing-room fire. In
an interval between the showers the “ field,”
consisting of eight women and two men, moved
off to the covert. I followed in the car and took
up a strategic position on the road. Drawing was
a lengthy proceeding, during which some of the
ladies of the Hunt produced lip-sticks and made
up their complexions under a dripping tree. The
rest amused themselves with local gossip and
disparaging criticisms of each other’s mounts.
The Master rode excitedly up and down cursing
loudly and making rude remarks to everybody,
regardless of their age or sex. The horses fidgeted
restlessly in the distracting fashion of their race,
sidling backwards down the road, standing on their
hind legs, pawing the ground and tossing their
heads backwards and forwards. The covert was
on a hill on the right above the road. The field
were out of sight on the other side of the hill, when
suddenly, on the left of the road, at the bottom
of a long and narrow valley, I saw a fox creeping
stealthily along. The friend who was with me in
the car saw it too.

“ Shouldn’t we do something ? ” she said,

“ Do what ? ” I asked.

“ HuUoa or make a noise.”

“ Why ? ” I asked.

“ Well, they’re looking for a fox, aren’t they ? ”

“ That is their affair, not ours,” I remarked. I
dislike killing animals. While realizing the painful
necessity for doing so on. occasions, I have no sym-
pathy with the uncivilized custom of chasing them
to death for pleasure. As for “ blooding ” children
and digging out foxes which have gone to ground,
such barbaric practices revolt me. A great many
hunting women say they agree with me. But I
observe they go on hunting just the same, excusing

THE WINDS OF TIME

264

themselves with rapturous allusions to the exhilarat-
ing effect of an autumn morning on horseback.

“Blank as usual,” exclaimed an irate woman,
jumping into the road almost on top of me.
“ There never are any foxes anyway in this rotten
place.”

I expressed surprise and wandered down the
road thinking, with inward satisfaction, of the poor
innocent fox I had saved from an unpleasant and
gory end. Leaning against a gate was an old
countryman, his eye glued on a distant field, where
a small object was dimly discernible sl in king in the
direction of a spinney.

“ That’s the rowt (route) he do always be follow-
ing,” he remarked, pointing with his stick to the
fox, which far from owing its life to me was appar-
entiy more intimately acquainted than I was with
the Hunt.

CHAPTER XXV

THE FUTURE — ^PATRIOTISM — ^A PRAYER

“ A ND what of Ireland ? ” I inquired of a

JLX. friend who knows our country well.

“ Hopeless, but not really serious “ was his facetious
diagnosis.

As an example of its paradoxical accuracy I may
draw attention to the fact that though, ever since
the victory of the Republicans at the polls in 1932,
as a class, we have all been poised for flight, so
far we have not even begun to fliap our wings.
Aware, by this time, that the only way to live in
Ireland is with our trunks packed in the hall and a
pantechnicon van waiting at the end of the tele-
phone, we are at any rate prepared for any eventu-
ality, which, on previous occasions, we were not.
Believing, as the more realistic of us do, that
the next move in the “ Irish question ” lies in
complete separation from England, we await — ^not
without misgiving — the inevitable proclamation of
our independence.

“ You can have your Republic and its con-
sequences whenever you like,” Mr. Thomas is
reported to have said to Mr. de Valera. Whether
Ireland will survive the consequences, in the shape
of economic isolation, remains to be seen. Things
under it cannot be much worse than they are at
present. Everything, as it is, is taxed, firom cows
to coffins, from agricultural machinery to feedingr
bottles, If anything evades the Customs under

265

THE WINDS OF TIME

266

one heading it becomes contraband under another.
Asking at the chemist’s one day for a box of pills,
and being handed a strange-looking variety, I
requested the usual sugar-coated ones.

“ Sugar-coated pills is confectionery and there-
fore subject to duty,” replied the assistant.

As one lands in the dawn at Rosslare after a
visit to London, the harassed officials searching
one’s luggage refer to colossal hsts of duties which
change with bewildering frequency. “ There
wasn’t a duty on it yesterday but there may be
to-day,” they explain apologetically — ^while in the
matter of books, one’s library ones are apt to be
banned between the date of posting and delivery,
and confiscated on arrival — all of which is “a
great inconvenience to thravellers and readers,”
as the Customs officer sympathetically observes.

The ban on knowledge is boimd to react. The
future of the world lies with countries who rule
and who think scientifically. And in Roman
CathoHc Ireland science is taboo. Allusions to it,
however, are sometimes vaguely made, even in the
pulpit, as happened in a distant Kerry parish at the
time when Dr. Barnes was preaching in London
on the theory of evolution. The congregation had
incurred the wrath of the Reverend Father, who
wound up his condemnation of their stupidity by
remarking that “ in England there is a Bishop who
tries to make out we are all descended from mon-
keys, but if he had known yez it’s from asses he’d
have said ye came.” — A. new and startling biological
theory which might be equally aptly applied to
other parts of Ireland.

Not only in science but in the matter of general
education the attitude of the Roman Catholic
Church is distinctly retrograde. By keeping people
^norant it hopes to preserve their faith ; by

THE FUTURE

267

suppressing knowledge of the facts of life, to keep
their morals intact. Its attitude to Birth Control
is perhaps understandable in a country so sparsely
populated as Ireland. Its denunciations on the
subject are fierce and not always intelligible to
peasant mentality. An unfortunate woman in
Kerry, about to give birth to her thirteenth child,
was one day bewailing her fate to me. Protestants,
she hinted, knew of “ ways ” by which such exces-
sive prolificness could be averted.

Having no desire to call down on my head the
wrath of the parish priest, who, sooner or later,
would have been sure to hear of any suggestion I
might make on the subject, I told her that any
limitation of her family in the future must be a
matter of arrangement with her husband.

“ Sure, amn’t I tired of telling him to conthrol
himself,” she replied. “ ‘ I can’t,’ sez he, ‘ the
Church don’t allow me to.’ ”

Not only in Ireland but all over the world the
social order of centuries is being broken up. Pre-
sumably it will be rebiiilt on entirely different
principles. To change the structure of society
one has, however, not only to change the institu-
tions of a country but the character of its inhabi-
tants. And the character of Ireland will require
a lot of changing. Life is giim, and is likely to be
grinuner in the future. Humour is disappearing
and gloom is deepening. If Ireland is to have any
future it will only be possible through hard work
and not through the waving of flags and the
spouting (in Irish) of empty resolutions. Whether,
in other courHiies, patriotism is a virtue or a vice,
in Ireland it is a deadly microbe eating its way
into the mentality and xmderminu:^ the nwrcde

THE WINDS OF TIME

268

of the population. It is the one standard by which
everybody is judged, rewarded or condemned.
In her frenzy to emancipate herself from the
influences which for generations sought to anglicize
her, Ireland appears to have parted with any
intelligence she ever possessed, so much so that
Irish patriotism to-day is little more than an absurd
obsession of parochial minds, in whom any real
love of country is lost in boastful raving or foolish
self-sufficiency. By constantly proclaiming the
brightness of our intellect, our ready wit, our native
resourcefulness, we have, in process of time, come
to consider ourselves an unusually gifted and
intelligent race — a conclusion aU the more remark-
able for the fact that we are, in reality, the most
ignorant and the most ineflELcient nation in Europe.
Industrially and agriculturally our stupidity is
almost unbelievable. In matters of finance our
history to-day is a mere track of ruin and bank-
ruptcy. The ideal of service is unheard of. That
hotels with a few exceptions are not run for their
comfort and convenience is obvious to every
tourist. That businesses are not opened for supply-
ing the wants of customers is amusingly proved by
an experience of Stephen Gwynn, who relates in
one of his books the efforts made in a certain
country town to obtain fish— -an almost unpro-
curable article of diet in country districts. Having
at last succeeded in opening a shop for the purpose,
the promoter went away on a holiday. On his
return, he was horrified to find the shop closed.
Searching the town for the manager he had left
in charge, he found him propping the wall of a
public-house.

" Why have you closed down ? ” he inquired.
“ Wasn’t the shop a success ? ”

“ Indeed an’ it was,” replied the manager.

CONCLUSIONS

269

removing his pipe from his mouth; “it was the
way people tormented me for fish. I couldn’t be
throubled with them any more,”

Intensely realistic by nature, the Irish have
their sentimental moments, and in these they are
given to thinking of themselves with pride as an
ancient race with a glorious past, forgetting that
the more ancient a people are, the nearer they are
to death. Although Ireland is by no means on
her death-bed to-day, there is a feeling of decay
in the air. The sadness which has always hovered
over her lovely moimtains and desolate bogs, the
melancholy decay which lies on her dreary towns
and dilapidated villages, is intensified a thousand-
fold. Civilization is a product of prosperity.
There has never been much of either in Ireland ;
there is less than ever at the present moment.
Mr, de Valera’s ideal, we are told, is a Christian
Socialist state, where eveiybody will work and
nobody will have more than 1,000 a year (inci-
dentally the rate at which his own services to the
State are rewarded). As a matter of fact, very
few people in Ireland to-day have anything like
that income, most of one’s friends and acquaint-
ances living on overdrafts at the Bank, or on a
system of exchange and barter with the local shop-
keepers.

With taxation higher than it has ever been, and
unemployment increasing every week ; with farm-
ing in a bankrupt condition and trade at a stand-
still, the way is not only paved for Communism,
the door is already open — ^and Ireland is not a
promising field for experiments of this kind. A
people as conservative and as self-centred as the
Irish have always proved themselves to be are not
likely to adapt themselves readily to conditions of
society where nobody is for him^lf and all are for

THE WINDS OF TIME

270

the State. Possibly the forces of disruption may
be held in check for a time. All the might and
power of the Church are directed against Com-
munism. The danger may be exaggerated. The
solution may be simpler dian we think.

“All that’s wanted is a little sense,” as Dan
remarked on a previous occasion of political
upheaval. With some of that valuable quality
much might yet be accomplished. Unfortunately
it is one which is even rarer than snakes in
Ireland.

Nobody but a fool would attempt to make
prophetic utterances about a country which has
been happily described as one in which the Impos-
sible always occurs and the Inevitable never comes
off. We are too near to events to see them in
their right proportion, to foretell their effect on the
future.

At die moment, imdoubtedly, “ things are a
fright,” as Mrs. Daly remarked when she first
saw an aeroplane flying over her patch of oats
in the middle of harvesting operations. “ Even
the reapers and the binders do be gone up into the
sky. Lord save us ! What next ? ”

All one can do while awaiting a solution of its
problems is to hope for the best for one’s country,
forgetting its unhappy past, remembering with
gratitude the many happy years one has spent
in it, praying with the poet of another distracted
land

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high ;
Where knowledge is free ;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by
narrow domestic walls ;

Where Words come out from the depth of truth ;

Where tirdess striving stretches its arms towards perfection ;
Where the dear stream of reason has not lost its way into
the dreary desert sand of dead habit ;

LET MY COUNTRY AWAKEN ! 27 1

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening
thought and action —

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country
awaken.

THE END

INDEX

Abbeville, 42
Abbey Theatre, 142, 182
Aberdeen, Marquis and Mar-
chioness of, 91-3
Aberdeen, Marchioness of, 162,
163

A. E. (George Russell), 141
Aedh of Scelig, 66
Agathocles, 44
Albert Hall, 86
Albert Memorial, 7
Alcibiades, 44
Allingham, Wm., 78
America, 93, 122, 136, 243
“ Anna Grace ” ballad, 77
Annals of the Four Masters, 66
Anuradapura (Ceylon), 250
Arabian Nights, 54
Ardfert, Dean of, 210
Ard-na-Sidhe, 73, 97 (building
of), 145, 230, 249, 259
Artillery Mansions, 15, 16
Ashbourne, Lord, 9
Ashbourne Act, 10
Astaire, Adfele (Lady Charles
Cavendish), 260
Atlantic Ocean, 64, 65
Autun, 42
Avignon, 40, 42

BallincoUig, 243
Ballyard, 64
Ballycartie, 215
Ballyheigue Castle, 64
Ballykissane, 221
Ballyseedy, 64
Banff (North America), 256
Banjo World, 14, 22
Banna Strand, Kerry, 105
Barnes, Dr. (Bishop of Birming-
ham), 266

Barnewall, Charles, Capt., 71, 72
Barnewall, Mrs., 71

W.T. 2

Barnewall, see Gordon, Ellen
Lady

Barnewall, see also Trimlestown
Battle of Festubert, 102

— of the Four Courts, 201

— of Rue du Bois, 1 02

— of Somme and Marne, 1 75

— of Ypres, 99
Beaufort, 80
Beauvais, 42
Belfast, 85
Belgium, 97
Belgrave Square, 23
Bennett, Sir William, 72
Berlin, 102

Bernards, Morrogh, the, 10
Besant, Mrs. (Annie), 24
Bhopal, Begum of, 58
‘‘ Biddy Boys,” 156
“ Big Bertha,” 189
Bismarck, 94
Bivona, 47

Black and Tans, 74, 153, 154,
155. 157. 158, 159, 180, 174,
175, 179, 192,202, 216, 226,
238, 258

Blackrock College, 248
Black Watch, the, 137
Blackwater, river, 12, 13, 260
Bland family, 64
Blaskets, the, 202
“ Blastus,” 4, 5
Blathmhac of Scelig, 66
Blennerhassetts, the, 64, 99, 100
Blennerhassett, Mr., 197
Bolshevism, 141, 159, 183
Bombay, 51
Boulogne, 99, 100, loi
Bourn, Mr. (of California), 62
Bourn, Maud, see Vincent
Bow River Valley, 257
Bridewell, the, 161
Bridget Mary, see Templemore
X T

INDEX

274

Brighton, 14, 71
Brisco, Mr., 24
Bristol, 12

Bronte, Duchy of, 49
Brussels, 8
“ Butchart ” Rock Garden, Vic-
toria, 256

Bute, Marquess and Marchioness
of, 51

Buttevant, 226

Cahirciveen, 87, 1 73, 1 74, 222
Calabria, 43
Callinafercy, 3, 64
Campbell, Lady Colin, 1 7
Canada, 199, 257
Canadian Pacific Railway, 254
Caragh, 105, 117, 134, 135
Caragh Lake, 26, 61, 75
Carisbrooke, see Denison
Carlsbad, 243

“ Carlton,” Mrs., the story of,
157-61

Carnegie Hall, 87, 95, 238, 240
Carrantuohill, 26, 189
Carson, Sir Edward, 86, 88, 89
Carson’s, Sir Edward, Covenant,

85

“ Carsonites,” 89, 94
Carthage, 44

Casement, Sir Roger, 105, 106,
144

Cassillis, Earl and Countess of, 5 1
Castlerosse, Lady, see Kenmare
Castlerosse, Lord, 258
Cavendish, Lord Charles, 260
Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 1 3
Ceylon, 249, 250
Charing Cross Road, 91
Chepstow, 93
CheyneWalk, 73, 141
Childers, Erskine, 1 99
China, 250
Christian Science, 23
— Scientists, 72
“ Christy Mahon,” 1 14
Church Army, the, 24
Churchill, Lady Randolph, 143,
144

Churchill, Witiston, 143
Chutes, the, 188

Clancy, the Widow, see Temple-
more

Claridge’s, 21, 22
Clive, Lord, 5

Collins, Michael, 195, 222, 223
Colombo^ 249
Colombs, the, 64
Communism, 270
Conca d’Oro, 43
Concordia, 48
Connaught Place, 99
Connolly, 108
Connors, John, 80 et seq.

Cook, an English, 1 94--5
Cooks, Irish, 242-4
Cork, 41, 125, 153, 191,212,216,
223, 242, 244 (a cook from)
Cork, the great Earl of, 260
Cork Examiner^ 165, 193, 200, 205
(extract from), 212
Corleone, 45, 47
Corrane, Lough, 66
Countess Cathleen, 108
Country Life, 17, 20
Cowley, Abraham, 262
Cromwell, another, 185
Cromwellian descendants, 4, 1 86
Crosbie family, 64
Cumann-na-ndBan, 133, 165
“ Curragh Incident,” 94
Curtin, Jeremiah, 78

Dail, the, 153, 198, 247, 248
Daily Mail, 85, 220
Daly, Mrs., 122, 123, 124, 148-
51, 2I2-i6, 270

Dan the gardener, see Moynihan
Danes, the, 69
Dante, 193
Day, Judge, 25
Delhi, 57 j 58, 60
Denison, Lady Irene (Mar-
chioness of Carisbrooke), 51
Derryquin, 64
Desmond, Castle, 12
Desmond, Countess of, 12
de Valera, E., 199, 200, 219, 220,
248, 265, 269
Devlin, J., 94
Devonshire, Duke of, 13
Devonshire, Dukes of, 260
Dingle Bay, 3, 64, 79, 87, 113
Disraeli, 95, 124
Diyatalawa (Ceylon), 249
Dolosbage (Ceylon), 249

INDEX 275

Dromana, ii, 12, 13 Forbeses Canteen, Lady Angela,

Dromore, 64 100

Dromqxiinna, 64
Dublin, 4, 105, 107, 109, 135,
138 et seq., 155, 157, 158,
161, 162, 163, 182, 183, 192,
199, 200, 202, 222, 224-6,
229, 230

Dublin Evenings,” 141
‘^Dublins,” the, 104
Dudley, Lady, nursing scheme,
62

Dudley’s, Lady, Hospital, 99, 100
Dundrum, 192

Dunraven, Earl of, 64, 99, 100,

lOI

Durbar, the, 50 et seq,
Eastbourne, 72

Easter Week Rebellion, 97, 105,
248

Edward, H.M. King, 22 ; coro-
nation of, 57 ; funeral, 182
Egmont, Lucy, Countess of, 24
Egypt, 12, 71, 72, 73
Eitgall, 66, 69
Elizabeth, Queen, 12
Emmett, 135
Empedocles, Port of, 47
Empress of Australia, 253
England, 1 1, 28, 86, 95, loi, 106,
108, 119, 137, 152, 166, 175,
176, 184, 247
Englands, Hugh, the, 249
Escoffier family, 244
Etna, 48, 49
Euston, 142

Farranfore, 194

Farranfore-Gahirciveen Railway,

Fastnet Rock, 106
Ferguson, Sir Samuel, 77
Fermoy, 242

Fishguard to Rosslare boats,
61

Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 135
Fitzgeralds, the Robert, 64
Fitzwilliam Place, Dublin, 141,
158, 161
Flanders, 176
Florence, 39
Folkestone, 72

France, 8, 39, 42, 97, 99, 100,
102, 182

Franco-German War, 94

Gaelic League, 249

Galle Face Hotel, Ceylon, 249

Garden-making, 34 et seq,, no,

Garinish Island, 64

Geddes, Sam, 91

Germany, 8, 9, 22, 108, 124, 189

Giraldus Cambrensis, 66

Gngenti, 45, 46, 47, 48

Cisco, 44

Gladstone, Mr., 184
Glenbeigh, 74, 173
Glencairn Abbey, 1 3
Glencar, 31, 32, 33, 189
Godfrey, Sir John, 7
Godfrey, Lady, 7
Godfrey, Mabel, 1 1
Godfrey, Sir William, 64
Godfrey, Mary, 64
Gordon, Sir Home, 13, 14, 15, 39
Gordon, Sir Seton, of Embo, 14,
^ 39

Gordon, Ellen Lady, 14, 71, 72,
219

Gough, General Sir (Hubert),

94

Granville Place, 71
Gravetye, 20

Great Southern and Western
Railway, 192, 194
Greece, 47
Greeks, 44

Green, Mrs. J, R-, historian, 144,

145

Grianaig, the yacht, 99, 100, loi
Griffith^, Arthur, 195, 222
Gwynn, Stephen, 269

Haldane, Professor, 169
— — The Inequality of Man,
168

Hamilton, Duke and Dachas of,

51

Hanafin and his cows, 78 et seq.
Hannah Maria, 246
Hannibal, 44
Hardinge, Lord, 53

INDEX

276

Harrington^ Mr., 258
Harrison-Hughes, see Reynolds
Harrods, 60
Hartington, Lord, 13
Harvard, U.S.A., 182
Herbert family, 62
Herod, King, 5

“ Hibernians, Ancient Order of,’*

S7

Higginson, Colonel, 249
Highland reels, 51
Hodson, Sir George, 64
Hodson, Meriel, 64
Holy Island, 1 7
Home Rule, 184

Act, 86

banners, 87

Bill promised, 89

circles, 91

Hong-Kong, 250
Hood family, 64

Horder, Morley, architect, 73,
87. 89, 98

House of Commons, 91, 149
Howth, 140

Hudson, Edward, 17, 20, 21, 42

Hurd, Percy, 16

Hyde Park (speeches), 86

India, 50 et seq.^ 166
Indian Ocean, 51, 59
Ireland, passim
Irish Club, the, 91
— Republican Army (I.R.A.),

154. 155j 156, 175. 178, 180,
186, 196, 198, 200, 201, 210,
21 1, 214

Irish Times, 135, 146, 147
Isle of Man, 118
Italy, 39 etseq., 115, 191
Iveragh, 87, 167

Jammet’s- restaurant, 141
Japan, 250-2
Jekyll, Miss, 21

Kaiser, the, 254
Kandy, 250

Kauiimann, Angelica, 4
Kcatii^’s Histcrj of Ireland, 66
Kemnare Bay, 63, 214
ifcenmare, Bari of, 61, 122, 229
Kenmarc, Countess 62

Kensington Palace, io2
Keogh, Sir Alfred, 100
Kerry, 26 et seq. (building in) ;
et seq, (society in) ; 75 et
seq, (fairy lore of) ; 12^ et
seq. (local customs) ; 157

(Christmas in) ; 16$ et seq.
(attempts at hygiene in) ;
201, 210 et seq. (the Civil
War in) ; 259 (the new) ;
et passim

Kerry, Bishop of, 221
Kilcoleman Abbey, 64
Kildare Street Club, 158
Kiifane, 5, 6

Kilkenny Hunt founded, 5

— Private Theatre, 5

Book of, 6

Killaha Castle, 4

Killarney, 4, 10, 62, 63, 80, 83,
122, 174, 189, 198, 21 1, 2x6,
225, 227, 230, 242, 258

— House, 61, 62

— Infirmary, 164
Killorglin, 74, 95, 107, 124, 1 31,

148, 151, 154, 163, 164, 167,
174, 201, 219 (barracks

blown up), 222, 229
King, HM. the, 52, 53, 57, 58,
200

Kissingen, 245
Kutch, Gulf of, 59
Kyoto (Japan), 251, 252

Ladies^ Field, 1 7
Lake Louise, 257
Lakeview, 63
Land League, 9, ii, 91
Leeson family, 4
Leeson-Marshall, Grace, 8
Leeson-Marshall, Mary, 8, see
also Godfrey
Leeson, Richard, 3
Leeson, Robert, 4
See also Marshall
Lenglen, Mile, 215
Lennox, Lady Algernon Gordon,
100

Leslie, Lady, 145
Leslie, Shane, 145
Levinska, Polish medium, 143
Lewis, Sir G^rge, 105
Licke<m, 177

Liffey, River, 141
Limerick, 107, 126, 171, 199
(Mayor of), 205, 207
Limerick Junction, 192, 225
Lindisfarne, 17

Lindsay, Mrs., murder of, 155
Lismore, 6, 260

Lismore, Archdeacon of, see
Power, A.

Lismore Castle, 13, 260
“ Lismore Estates Company,’*
261

Listowel, 201
Lloyd George, 89, 93, 94
Lochlein, see O’Donohue
Loefflers, the, loi
Loire, Ghiteaux of, 40, 41
Londesborough, Earl and Coun-
tess of, 51

London, 50, 71, 97, 99, loi, 102,
III, 1 13, 130, 132, 141, 142,
144, 213, 267

— Conference, the, 194

— Library, 42
Louise, Lake, 256
Lourdes, 243
Lutyens, Sir Edwin, 17
Lutyens, Lady Emily, 24
Lyons, 42

McCartie, Mr., 21 1, 212
MacDonagh, 108
MacDonnell’s parcel-packing
depot, Lady, 102
Macon, 42

Macroom, murder of Auxiliaries

at, 155

MacSwiney, Mary, 200
MacSwiney, Terence, 153
Madonian Mountains, 48
Magills, the, 197
Maguire, Mis., 118, 119, 120
Mahaffy, Professor, 183
Maiano, 39

Mair, George, 95, 1 41, 142
Malahide, 140
Malcolmsons, the, 249
Mallow, 192, 193^ 226, 230
Malocatha, R. M., 223
Maloja, 50

Malone, “Brigadier-General,”
238

GmrtMm, 142

INDEX 277

Maple Bay (Vancouver Island),

256

Maria the parlourmaid, 235, 237
Marineo, 46
Markham family, 4
Marshall estates, 3
Marshall family, 4
Marshall, Markham Leeson, 5
Mary Bridget, see Templemore
Matania, F., 102
Maxwell’s executions, Sir John,
107

Mayflower, the, 222
Mellowes, Irregular leader, 247
Melun, 42

Messiah, the new, 24
Messina, 50
Millstreet, 227
Milltown, Earl of, 4
Misilmeri, 45
Miyanoshita (Japan), 252
Monreale, 43
Monte Carlo, 42
Monte Pellegrino, 43
Morning Post, 159
Moslems^ 52
Mount Everest, 203
Moynihan, Mrs., 236, 237, 238,^
240

Moynihan, Dan, 109, no, 117,
1 18, 133, 200, 202, 220, 236,
240, 241, 271
Muckross, 62, 63
Munstead, 21
Munster, 12, 66
“Munsters,” the, 64, 102, 105

Naples, 43

National Volunteers, 93, 95,

97

Nationalist Meeting, a, 85 ei
seq.

~ Party, the, 89, 152
Nawanagar, 51? 58
Nawanagar, “ Ranji,” Jam
Sahib of, 50 et seq.

Nelson (Admiral), 49
Newncs, 17, 18
News of the World, i8
New York, 63, 259
Nikko (Japan), 252
Nile V^ey, 72
Northumberlaaad, 17

INDEX

278

Norway, 1 15

Nuwara Eliya (Ceylon), 249

O’Brien, Pat, 87
O’Callaghan, Mrs,, 199
O’Connell, Lady, 225, 229
O’Connell, Sir Morgan, 63
O’ Conor, Rory, 247
O’Conorites, Rory, 199
O’Donnell, Tom, 91
O’Donoghue of the Glen, the, 4
O’Donohue, Daniel, King of
Lochlein (fairy chief), 83
Ollendorff manner, 53
Olympia, 24
Omar Khayydm, 48
O’Neill, Maire, 142
Oolagh, 1 15
Orangemen, 249
O’Sullivan, Mary, 244, 245
O’Sullivan, Mr., 74
Outlook^ The^ 16
Ovington Square, 16, 73

Palermo, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49
— Hotel des Palmes, 46, 48
Parnell, Charles, 10, 152, 184
Parthenon, 47
Pearse, 108
Peking, 250

Peradeniya Gardens (Ceylon),
250

Pigott conspiracy, 10
Playboy of the Western Worlds 113
Plunkett, 108
Plunkett, Sir Horace, 162
Polanuruwa (Ceylon), 250
Portman Square, 71
Portsmouth Harbour, 250
Power, Ven. Ambrose, 5, 6
Power, Frances, 224
Power, Sir John, 5, 6
Power, No 5, see Windeyer
Power, Richard, 5
Power, Willie, 13
Priestley, Sir Arthur, 51
Prizzi, 47
Provence, 40, 47
Puck Fair, 124 et seq,

“ Purdah ladies,” 53

Qpebec^ 256

Qjiecn, H.M* the* 52, 53, 57, 58

Queen Anne’s Gate, 1 7
Queen’s Hall, 22
Queenstown, 106
Quinlan, Michael, 1 69, 1 70, 1 72

Ragusa, Signor, 46, 48
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 1 2
Randazzo, 49
“ Ranji,” see Nawanagar
Rathgar, 141
Rathmore, 193, 194
Redmond, John, 86, 87, 88, 89,

94> 95 j 99. 184
Redmond, Mrs., 89
Redmond, Major Willie, 1 02
Reich, Dr. Emil, 21, 22
Republic, the, 174, 197 (ex-
pectations of) ; 198, 248,

249, 266

Reynolds, Gertrude (Mrs. Har-
rison-Hughes), 39, 40
Riddell, Lord, 17,18
Robinson, William, 20, 21
Rocky Mountains, 257
Rome, 47

Rosslare, 61, 193, 266
Royal Irish Constabulary
(R.I.C.), 10, 131, 154, 155
Russborough, 4

Russell, Charles, Hon., 39, 41,
42

Russell, George, see A. E.

Russell of Killowen, Lord, 39
Russia, 203

Ryan, Major Julian, 1 02

St. Ambrose, 168

St. Brigid’s Eve custom, 1 57

St. Finan the Leper, 66

St. Gervaise, 168

St. Michael, Church of, 66, 68

St. Patrick, 66

St, Protasus, 168

St. Stephen’s Day custom, 156

Sankey a,nd Moody hymns, 7

Scapa Flow, 1 1 5

“ Scariveen ” (North Wind), 109

Scotland, 39, 1 1 5, 202

Scott, Montagu, M.P., 71

See Fin, 31, 115

Segesta, 47

— Temple of, 44

Serpentine, the, 115

INDEX

279

Seychelles Islands, 115
Shanghai, 251
Shea, Patsy, 171, 172
Sicily, 42 et seq.

Sigiri, rock of (Ceylon), 250
Silenus, 44

Sinn Fein, 90, 132, 137, 150,
152. 153. i 54 > i75j176, 183,
184

Qub, 74, 155

Sinn Feiners, 107, 135, 157,

174

Skelligs, Greater and Small, 64 et
seq. See also Blathmac, and
Aedh

Slieve Mish range, 26
Sloane Square, school of needle-
work, 102

Smith, Dr., History of Kerry ^ 66
Southampton dock, 99
— Water, 99

Southern Unionist Alliance,
148

Stephen’s Green, Dublin, 140,
144

Stephens, James, 141, 143, 144
Stevenson, R. L., 194
Stokes, “ Bess,” 25
Stuart, Harry, 13
Stuart, Henry Viliiers, 1 1
Stuart, Mary Viliiers, r i
Suffragettes, 55
Sweeny, Mrs., 236, 237, 238
Swinburne, A. C., xi, 104
Switzerland, 115
Synge (J. M.), 182, 183
Syracuse, 45, 48

Tagore, Rabindranath, 177
Taj Mahal Hotel, 51
Taormina, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49,

50

Targa-Florio course, 48
Templemore, “ bleeding ” statue
at, 167-72
Termini, 48
Thames, the, 260
Thomas, Mr. J. H., 265
Thoreau, on living alone, 113
Times y The^ 10, 204
Tipperary, Go., 5
Tipping, Mr. Avray, 93

Tokio, 253
Tone, Wolfe, 135
Tottenham Court Road style,
53

Tralee, 7, 137, 214, 219

— Barracks, 64, 244

— Bay, 106

Treaty, the, 199, 247, 248
Trimlestown, Lord, 72
Trinity College, Dublin, 182,
183

Tuatha-de-danaan (mythical in-
habitants of Ireland), 75,

259

Tullamaine Castle, 5

Ulster, 88, 89, 93, 228

Valentia Island, 64, 74, 107
Vancouver Island, 253
Versailles, 42
Victoria, Queen, 106, 124
Victoria (British Columbia), 255
Victoria Street, 16
Viliiers Stuart, see Stuart
Vincent, Arthur, 62
Vincent, Maud, 62, 63

Wade, Sir Willoughby and Lady,
39

Walpole, Horace, 4
Walpole Street, 141
Warden, Colonel, 64
War Office, 104
Wars of the Danes, 66
Waterford City, 207
Waterford, Co., 203, 260
Waterloo, 99
Watts Dunton, Mr., xi
Western front, 104
Westmorland slates, 74, 97
Wicklow, Go., 4

— Mountains, 140
Wilmot, Sir Charles, 4
Wimbome, Lord and Lady,

93

Windeyer, Mrs., 250, 256
Woman Movement, 55

— Suffrage, 23

Women and Childers ” party,
200

INDEX

200

Women’s National Health As-
sociation, 95, 162, 164
“ Wren boys,” 156
Wright, C. Hagberg, 42
Wyndham (George), Act, 9,
184

Yeats, W. B., 108, 141, 14Q, igo
183

Yokohama, 253, 255
Youghal, 12

Zoo (Nawanagar), 59

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